Lost Sheep in Grasmere

On Saturday August 7 all four of us did a short hike together to Easedale Tarn above town.  I wanted some time alone and was eager to hike cross country and explore.  Yet I did not quite get away people and found myself near another trail that continued to go further up. A solo British woman named J walked by and I called out something in jest to her and we connected. She asked me what I was doing here in the UK and I gave her the spiritual reason. She happened to be Buddhist in belief but was asking me some pretty deep questions. I wanted to spend more time with her but was committed to meet C and R at 3pm to join them on another hike and had no mobile phone connection right where I was to try and change plans.   I shared later with my three friends c, r and g about my encounter with  and my burden for her and how I would have loved to have spent more time with her. 

I really had  no choice but to leave J and was burdened to pray for her for the rest of the day and then the next morning (a Sunday).  We drove 10 miles or so to Keswick for a church service then back to Grasmere where we were staying. We as a group of four really had no clear plans for the rest of the day. In the end R and C decided to stay in town and do their own thing.  G and I decided to go on a walk without a map, looking for the first footpath sign off the road.  Such sign posts are everywhere here. We of course found one, and soon met a couple who had a map and asked them where the trail went. Not that it mattered much.  But it went up hill. As we got near the small pass, we could see that possibly we could go higher and loop back through the sheep pastures back to Grasmere rather than going back the sane way we came.  We had no map, just sheep trails now and no sign posts, just a good sense of direction.   We met another group of three as a trail became more defined, and got details of where the trail led - almost right to where we had started from.  

As we descended and came near to Grasmere, I noticed a solo lady walking up the trail towards us.  As we got nearer to each other, I realized it was J, the same lady from yesterday!  How amazing!   We were able to talk a bit more with her about each others beliefs. G, my friend has just recently finished reading a biography about a lady who had once been a Buddhist nun but then became a Christian. 

We marvelled at the way God had allowed His burden to come on me for this lady yesterday after meeting her.  The odds of meeting her the next day in a place that has dozens of foot path routes and the fact she was not even staying in the same town as ourselves and that she already had walked for many hours that day, and that we net again - cannot simply be mere coincidence.  

I had met her yesterday on a hilly sheep pasture where sheep are scattered about as solo sheep or in very small groups. I was reminded about the parable of the lost sheep that Jesus shared from the book of Luke, chapter 15, verses 3-7 in the New testament of the Bible. The shepherd leaves his hundred sheep looking for the lost one and finds it and brings it back home and rejoices.  J seemed 'lost' and though she talked as if Buddhism was her answer to life, I sensed a sadness over her.  To have met her the second time under the situation and really praying for her and wanting to have spent more time with her the first time, but could not, them amazingly meeting her the next day wandering trails and hillsides of scattered sheep without a map and running into her again, was 'WOW'. The living God knows she is searching for the Truth. Jesus, as the Good Shepherd is looking for her.  He knows she is lost but has His ways of making himself known to her.  Please Pray that God will continue to put Christians in her path in amazing ways and that she will come to know and follow Jesus.