Lose oneself enough to be led…
The title of this post comes from the song “Hard to Get” by one of my favorite Christian artists, Rich Mullins. The line has stuck in my head for years, because I always found a dual meaning in it. The terms “lost” and “found” are often used to refer to the stations in life and the search for a deeper meaning in life—the gospel song “Amazing Grace” comes to mind.
These lines are the very end of the song and were originally worded as:
I can’t see how you’re leading me unless you’ve led me here
Where I’m lost enough to let myself be led
And so you’ve been here all along I guess
It’s just your way and you are just plain hard to get
I see these four lines as a depiction of someone realizing, perhaps for the first time, that the troubles of life may have been the journey that God had planned for him. It is both humbling, but uplifting to learn that the whole time through all of those hardships that God was not making him suffer, but actually there to serve as the guide to lead him through. The man was not able to understand what God had in store, or what His intentions were, or even that God was the one leading him. He must have thought that God had abandoned him. But, then he realized that would not happen, and as confusing it may seem, this was just God’s way.
The Baha’i Faith teaches us that we are not yet ready to comprehend many things in God’s kingdom. As each generation passes we learn more, and throughout our development, different manifestations have come to explain more of it to us. Jesus Christ was one of those manifestations and His message is that of God. Baha’u’llah was the latest of those manifestations and His message is that of God.
I saw something more in these lines though… I love the idea that before we can be led, we must first be lost. Many times in life, I felt that I was strong, capable, independent and needed no leadership from anyone—that I was a leader. I believed that I knew who I was and where I was going in life—that I was the one responsible for my successes and even my failures. Some hard times came, and I will not pretend that I always had faith—I doubted, I tested, I did things I am not proud of. There was never one cathartic event in my life that made me think that I had hit bottom, or in which I became a new person, but believe me when I tell you I wandered for a long time… and still am wandering.
Not until I had lived enough of life and lost my direction to the point that I was ready to follow and not to lead all of the time did I find and accept the Baha’i Faith. In other words, I had to lose myself enough to be led.
(Incidentally, this line comes from the same song as the line, “Only lashing at the one who loves me the most”, which I have already written about here.)