I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

The great woodsman Daniel Boone's reply when asked if he had ever been lost

I was 14 years old the night I waited outside for my dad to pick me up from basketball practice. It was a frigid night, with temperatures hovering around zero degrees, and I had already waited outside for about thirty minutes before I finally decided to walk home. The gym was already locked and I had briefly considered trying to break into a car that was outside in the parking lot, but I had been raised to respect both the law and other people's property, so I discarded that idea.

The school was a couple of miles from our home and while I had walked before, it was never at night and, like the great Daniel Boone, I became bewildered. We had a friend who had passed away from freezing when he and his brothers got separated from their family while on a hike on Mount Rainier when we lived in Washington State when I was about eight years old, so the understanding that you really could freeze to death was already deeply ingrained in my mind.

Still, I can remember becoming so sleepy that I was ready to lay down in the snow in the front yard of a house I was passing by. You may wonder why I was so stupid as to not just ring somebody's doorbell and ask for help, but by that time I was completely disoriented and more than a little unsure of where I even was. I guess God wasn't quite through with me yet, because it was about that time that headlights flashed from behind and a car slowed to see who I was.

It was my dad, and I imagine that I had never been so happy to see anyone in my life. You see, I was lost, but now was found!

I never went to the doctor, but since that night every time the temperature gets near freezing I get severe pain in my fingers, toes, nose, ears and cheeks. After that the pain numbs for a while until I start to warm up again and go through the same series of pain that I experience when my body temperature drops, so I guess I got frostbite on all of those extremities that night.

So, what's the point? Just this: There are millions of people who are feeling lost, right now, in this world in which we live. This feeling does not always come with the realization, however, that one is genuinely lost. It more often comes with the feeling of being bewildered and disoriented. Sometimes it comes with pain, at other times a numbness of mind and body that just makes us want to lie down and go to sleep. But the fact remains - we are lost.

The comfort we can take is this: We have a loving Father who is seeking us out if we genuinely want Him to. Just as I was hoping against hope that my dad would find me, so many people who are lost are desperately hoping that God will find them. The good news is that Jesus came into this world to seek and save that which was lost. He still does so to this very day, if we will let Him, but we indeed have to let Him before it is too late and we fall asleep for that final time.

Jesus tells us that there is rejoicing in heaven over the finding of even one lost sheep, so we know that neither He nor the Father want us to remain in our lost state. The only question is, do we want to be found? Our salvation hinges on the correct answer to that very question!