So what does a Jotting look like?

Well here's one — selected at random, of course…

Lost & Found

Now I don’t want you to get the idea I make a habit of it, but there have been two significant occasions in my life when I have “lost” one of my children.

The first was a good few years ago on a family holiday. It was Weymouth beach and it was very crowded. My son, then about four, who has always had an independent streak, decided to go walkabout. It happened in an instant. One minute he was there making sand castles, then in the twinkling of an eye, he was gone. There suddenly seemed to be as many people on the beach as there were grains of sand. Panic began to set in. Goodness knows what terrible fate had befallen him. He must have been washed out to sea or abducted by some evil sunbather. Just as I was about to go to the police, I turned a corner and there he was, totally absorbed in a Punch & Judy show, an unperturbed member of the audience, absolutely oblivious of anything else.

The second was more recently in the isles of Scilly, where we met up with friends and their two children. The plan was to walk around the fortress, which stretches round part of the island, across overgrown terrain to a hotel on the other side where we planned to have lunch. We set off and after a quarter of an hour became aware that Jamie-Li and Suzi were nowhere to be seen. The problem was that the unmade paths split here and there providing a variety of routes to various parts of the fortress wall, beyond which there was a sheer drop to the sea and in my mind, certain death. After what seemed like an eternity, convinced we would never see them again, we turned a corner and there they were, coming up a side path, in blissful ignorance.

In both cases someone was lost but didn’t realise it. In our post Christian culture our unsaved friends often find themselves in the same position. They see no need for being “found” because in their eyes they are not lost in the first place. I believe we should be aware of this and take a step back, so we begin our witness where they are at, not where we imagine them to be. A good idea is to start by praying that they might first be convinced of their lost state. And that’s where the Holy Spirit comes in.

Nowadays, of course, my children are too old to get physically lost, but I’ve got four grandchildren, so there's still time…