"Not all who wander," observed Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien, "are lost."  Isn't this like the human being?  When we wander, we let go.  We let go of our plans and intentions, set aside our immediate ambitions.  We step away from the past, cast aside the future.  We don't plan, we don't frame.  We don't set a time.

     But are we lost?  Over twenty years ago, I read an interview with a person I'll call James, a prisoner on death row in the state of Texas.  Earlier in his life, many years before, in fact, James murdered another human being.  In a week, he was to be executed for his crime.  All his life, James had, by his own account, wandered.  He never thought about what his life meant, never thought about where it began or where it was going.  He only did what was immediately before him.


     By his own account, James was lost.

     At some point in his imprisonment, however, James embraced Christianity.  He gave his heart to Jesus.  Everything changed.  Though he continued to wander, to wander through the permutations of the appeals processes of death row, to wander through the many doors he found in his new life with Jesus, he no longer felt lost.  He knew, ultimately, where he was going.  As he put it in the interview, "All my life, I never had a home.  Now I'm going to have one."

     Sometimes we wander, sometimes we make plans.  Still other times, we have no clue about either one.  Perhaps it is when we are the most lost that we are the most found.