I completely understand the motivation for that great invention, the GPS navigation system.  When they first hit the market, I had no use for GPS systems.  They were expensive and maybe some people needed them – those who couldn’t or wouldn’t read a map.

But, recently, while I haven’t invested in a GPS yet, I am warming to the idea of that voice in the box that tells you where to turn and how to get back on the road when you’ve veered off.

Because I’ve been lost.  In spite of nicely printed directions from google or mapquest, a great road atlas, or even precise directions from a person – in my hand, I get off track and on to the wrong roads.  It has happened too many times, so many times that I’ve lost count.  I begin my journey armed with good directions from the internet, with high hopes of reaching my destination at the time I’m supposed to, and often end up lost.

I don’t like the feeling I get when I’m driving down the wrong road, have to turn around, and must check and re-check my bearings.  When I’m lost, all the miscellaneous trips down wrong roads are not at all fun, like sight seeing.  In spite of how neatly the lawns are manicured and how cute the houses look, none of that intrigues me at all.  What I want, more than anything, is to get back on the right road to get where I’m going.

The GPS navigation system does this for us.  A human voice tells us that we missed an exit, or took a wrong turn, and the system recalculates to get us pointing in the right direction.  Kind of nice, kind of comforting to have around.

Have you ever been lost?  I’m sure we all have stories of losing our way.  Not just while driving or walking somewhere, either.  Navigating through life, we can end up missing signs, taking wrong turns, completely confused.

The crying kid in the department store, who has temporarily lost his mom in the racks of clothes, brings back that lost feeling.  Separated from what is familiar and safe. It is scary to be lost, and we instinctively do all we can to find our compass point again and get back on track.

Clearly, the people who would eventually become the nation of Israel, were always getting lost.  Jacob’s sons moved to Egypt because they were searching for food during a famine in the land.  Lost. Cut off from their native land and familiar circumstances, they found their bearings again in Egypt – and became a numerous people.

Then, as the history goes, the Egyptian king enslaved these people, and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field.  Once again, they must have felt the sense of being lost.  Working as slaves not only tore them away from their own livelihoods, but also robbed them of their freedom, and their former identity.  From sons of Israel to slaves.  Lost.

In their lost, enslaved, condition, the people of Israel could do nothing but work – and groan.  “…the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.”  They knew they were lost, and needed help.  It was less of a specific cry to a God they knew and more like the cry of kid in the department store.  “W need help, someone!”

And “someone” heard.  That was God.  “Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.  And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”  God answered them in their lost state, even when they may not have known to whom they were crying.

The people of Israel were delivered from slavery. But they continued to get lost as they followed Moses out to the land God had promised them, wandering in the desert for forty years before finding the promised land.  Although their GPS navigation system was working well, these people did not follow it.  They disobeyed God, the voice that told them where to go…and as a result, found themselves in that uncomfortable place of being lost over and over again.  There were instances when the people “came back” to God and walked in His ways, but those moments were fewer than their continual habit of not listening to God and getting lost.

How uncannily like us.  Our natural tendency to not listen to God leads to our losing our way, deviating from the road that leads to life and taking the one that leads to death. 

The good news is that when we’re lost, hopelessly lost, God hears our cry.  Like turning on the GPS system on a life size scale, God’s voice meets our need to get through the fog and frustration of being lost and get back on course.  If only we would listen.