I Got Lost at the County Fair

I want to say at the start that I did not let go of the rope on purpose and I have said this many times and nobody has ever once suggested otherwise, and I still say it.

We take Bucky to the county fair. This is not because he wins anything. He has never won anything and he is not entered in anything, he comes because my dad says it is easier than what happens to a gate when he is left at home for a day.

I had the rope. Dad had gone to talk to a man about a bale trailer. And a woman came past pushing a stroller and Bucky put his whole head into the stroller in the way he does, and I let go of the rope for about four seconds to get his head out, and then two things happened at once, which is how everything happens at a fair.

The tannoy went off right above me. And a group of about thirty people came out of the sheep shed all together.

When they had gone past, I was somewhere else. Not far. Maybe forty feet from where I had been, and forty feet at a fair with all the pens the same and all the bunting the same is a different country. Bucky was gone too. I could not see my dad and I could not see anything I recognized and I was nine and I sat down on the end of a straw bale and did the thing where you do not cry because if you start you have started.

It was forty minutes. I know because I asked afterward and my dad told me the truth instead of making it smaller.

What I did not know at the time, and what I found out later that evening, is that he had gone to the tannoy office in the first six minutes and they would not do an announcement until fifteen. So for those nine minutes he walked the whole line of the pens twice, and then he did the thing that found me, which is that he stopped looking for a boy and started looking for a goat, because a goat is taller than a crowd is thick.

He came round the end of the shed with Bucky already on the rope and I stood up off that bale before I had decided to.

The list of places that do not exist

Psalm 139 is a man conducting a search, and what makes it remarkable is that he is not searching for God, he is searching for a gap.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. (Psalm 139:7, 8)

He goes up. He goes down. Then he tries distance, which is the one most people actually try:

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. (Psalm 139:9, 10)

And then he tries the one that a nine year old on a bale would try, which is hiding in the dark:

If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee. (Psalm 139:11, 12)

Four attempts. Four failures. The psalm is not anxious about this and it is not a threat, it is written as relief, and the words attached to the hand are lead and hold rather than catch.

You are inside a reach that has no edge to fall off, and the psalm went looking for one on purpose. Psalm 139:7 asks the question as a search rather than as a worry, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as company instead of as surveillance.

Forty feet is enough. That is the thing about being lost that grown-ups forget: it does not take distance, it takes unfamiliarity, and a child can be lost inside the sound of the person looking for them.

You have never once been out of sight, however lost you felt at the time. The written word says even the night is light about Him, and His Spirit is what makes that hold in somebody sitting still and trying not to start crying.

He knew where I was the whole time

There is a sentence at the front of that psalm that changes what the searching means.

Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. (Psalm 139:3, 4)

Acquainted with all my ways. That is not surveillance language, it is the language you use about somebody who has known a person a long time and is not surprised by them.

Which means the searching in verses seven to twelve is not God searching. It is a man checking, and finding every exit shut, and the psalm ends up somewhere very warm because of it.

You are known by somebody who is not startled by anything about you. Psalm 139:4 puts the knowing ahead of the word being spoken, and the Spirit of God is what turns being that thoroughly known into a relief rather than a fear.

And there is a line near the end that is the whole point of the psalm, and children get it faster than adults do: How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!

You have been thought about more than you have any way of counting. That is what Psalm 139:17 claims in plain arithmetic, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves it from a number into a body sitting on a straw bale.