No trace of a path and the sound of wild boars who can smell my blood…

So, I am on the mountains of Southern Italy, hazardously near the edge of a six-hundred-foot precipice. All that’s behind me is deep, dense, dark forest with not the faintest trace of a path. For three hours I have been alone: lost, with no cell phone and a solar operated wristwatch that has stopped because the leaf foliage is blocking out all sunshine and all conceivable hope of rescue. I might also add that my legs are torn to shreds and I am remembering a guidebook that warned me that these remote parts of Italy are inhabited by wild boar who, like sharks of the deep waters, are the sharks of the deep woods and can smell the blood pouring down my legs from quite some distance.

This episode (which is unfortunately all true) began with a family vacation and my waking at 5:00am with a notion that I could run to the top of the mountain that was directly behind our guest house. Fabrice, the owner of our accommodation, had mentioned something about mountain paths and the idea was lodged. It all started out well enough. The sun was rising, the birds were singing, and I congratulated myself as I spotted all of the little painted red and white painted markers that identified the trail. And when these ran out, I remembered my Cub Scout Training and made a few little crosses out of twigs in the unlikely event that I should lose my way. And when the path really narrowed, and it got really dark (and everything inside of me said “Turn back!”) I pressed on up the mountain. 

What happened next is what I shall refer to as an “herbaceous mirage.” That is, as I looked through the dense forest, it looked like a rough kind of path was in front of me but as I ran toward it and then looked back, it was clear that there was no path at all. At this point I still didn’t realize I was nowhere near any path! This went on for about an hour and a half by which time I was completely disorientated, and only then did it begin to dawn on me that I might be just a little bit lost. So, I just kept on running… with progressively more stumbling, tripping and full-on falling over. It won’t be a surprise to you to learn that I did pray a bit. My prayer was something along the lines of, “Please Lord, this is not going terribly well, my family is expecting me for breakfast, so please could you bless my best attempts to get myself out of here!”

And then I came up against a wire fence with barbed wire curled around the top. Hallelujah! This was the first “non-thorny shrub/tree” I had seen in over two hours. I quickly imagined a scenario that somebody must have built this fence so there must be a road nearby and if I can find a road and I can make it home. That was when I noticed that my legs were bleeding into my running shoes from all the thorns that had embedded themselves into my calves. This was also the moment when I was pretty sure I heard the ominous snorting of wild carnivorous boar. And this was absolutely the moment that I witnessed the six hundred foot precipice that was just on the other side of the wire fence. These circumstances kind of kick-started a new kind of prayer.

The curious thing was that while crashing into this dead-end certainly felt like the absence of God, it was actually the beginning of being found. I had now stopped running. My prayer had changed from simply a petition that the Lord bless my best attempts to fix the situation myself, to a desperate cry for rescue. It was only then that  I noticed a single white polythene strip tied to a tree: just maybe someone had put it there? So, I walked in that direction for about ten minutes (which was indeed a kind of test of faith) until I found a second little white plastic tree ornament. It was like following plastic breadcrumbs and when these dried up, I suddenly spotted a little red and white painted marker, and then another one and then another and then an opening. I felt sunshine on my face for the first time in over three hours. I now recognized a small dirt road that was just five minutes from our guesthouse. Had I been able to jump with joy I would have done. I looked up to say, “Thank you” and saw, for the first time, that this entire debacle had taken place under the shadow of the cross. I know that is the kind of thing you expect me to say – but literally – on the top of the adjacent mountain was a very large cross!

As I walked free of those dark woods it was so clear that God had come looking for me. In all my naiveté, I had radically underestimated the extent of the danger I was in.  Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” [John 10:27]. That is so gracious. He could so easily have added, “but not always,” because we both know that I ignored a very keen sense of His wisdom to turn back long before I got into trouble. The Bible reassures me that one day I will be united with God and I will never get lost again. In the meantime, however, neither Jesus nor the apostle Paul ever promised me that I would be perfect (and this is not an invitation for reckless living, but rather a hard reality).  He is gracious, and I see that day by day He, regularly saves me from myself.

The Lord knew that this trip was important to me. After a period of too much illness and too many surgeries, I wanted to reassure my family that I was fully present, alive and well, and that I loved them. As I stumbled out from the woods it struck that my heavenly Father is led by exactly the same desire!