A "LOST" Mystery

I really have only two T.V. shows that I am wholly committed to. "LOST" and the greatness of "24"! I’m really intrigued by "LOST". Brittany (my daughter) and I watch the show together each week. We’re not purists in that we didn’t see the entire first season. So I’m no authority on the characters or plot.

"LOST" is intriguing because of how all the lives intertwine. If you watch you know what I mean if you don’t… well please stay with me, there is a point to all this. The reason that people say things like, “It’s a small world” is because it is remarkable how often seemingly random events throw unlikely people together. For example, did you know that Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth, saved the life of Robert Todd Lincoln some time after the younger Booth killed Robert’s father Abraham Lincoln?

Strange, random things like this happen all the time. Perhaps not with the same concentration as on the "LOST" island, but they do occur more than we would expect. When these oddities occur in the lives of Christians they are often called “God things.” “God things” are those events that work to God’s purposes, (as we see it) that are too mysterious to have been created by mere chance.

But there are two things that bother me about this. First, we shouldn’t trivialize God to the extent that we think he cares enough about us to help us find the perfect fabric for the drapes in the guest room, but he’s not particularly inclined to help starving children or heal a mother of three who has cancer. Second, I know we are God’s children and he does care about us. But our love for Him should reflect, not the self interests of trivial things in our lives, but His interest and the things that he said matter in our lives.

I love the mysteries in "LOST". But more than that, I love the mystery that is the spirit of Jesus Christ displayed in the lives of noble, ordinary people (Colossians 1:27). Your life is intertwined with other lives today and you don’t know what God is doing on the other side of your life. By displaying the noble heart of our Master, you call those other lives to a higher place. Perhaps the mystery is that our lives, as trivial as they may seem to us, are really to keep others from being "LOST".

mt