When I was a pre-school child, my mother used to take my sister, Yvonne, and I shopping in Mark Foy's. Mark Foy's was a big, exciting department store diagonally opposite the Hyde Park entrance to Museum Station in Sydney's CBD. The building was a marvel to behold from the outside. With its turrets and decorative finishes, it looked a bit like Uncle Scrooge McDuck's mansion. However, it was the interior that really captured the imagination of a little three-year old boy: All the floors in the store opened onto a big, central atrium, and, reaching from the basement to the top floor stood an aviary full of live birds, budgerigars, I think. What a place to let one's imagination run wild!

And on one visit to Mark Foy's, my imagination really did run wild: I got lost. Somehow I got separated from my mother and sister. When I looked around and couldn't see them, this magical palace filled with light, buzzing with movement and excitement, became a place that was very frightening. I was terrified. I was missing in Mark Foy's. I felt utterly alone, abandoned, lost. All kinds of thoughts flooded my mind. I imagined that I would never be found and had no idea what I should do. Then my mother suddenly appeared, and everything was OK again. On reflection, I don't think she had actually lost me.....I just thought she had at the time.

"Can a mother forget her baby, and have no feeling for the child she has borne? Even if she does do so, I will not forget you! See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." (Isaiah 49: 15-16)

This experience of being lost, that happened more than sixty years ago, has remained with me ever since. I find it hard to remember in detail most of the events of my early childhood, but this one is vivid. If I think of my early years and try to recall something from when I was a little boy, I immediately remember being missing in Mark Foy's.

Thinking that one is lost.... My guess is that probably all of us have had an experience like this at sometime in our lives. Some may have been lost as children, while others, as adults, might have been lost in the bush, in a foreign city, or at sea. Some may have found this just frustrating, while others might have been disturbed by a real sense of fear. Whatever the emotion, it certainly would not have been a pleasant one.

Occasionally as a priest I meet people to whom my heart really goes out. They are weighed-down with such a heavy sense of guilt that they think they are lost. They think that somehow they have left the circle of God's friendship. They believe themselves to be utterly alone, abandoned, lost, with no hope of being found, with no idea as to what they should do. Their experience is not unlike mine, as a little boy who thought he was missing in Mark Foy's. They look to the future in fear.

Slickly quoting a passage from the Bible often doesn't offer real help, yet, I have found that the words of God spoken through the prophet Isaiah thousands of years ago, can really speak to someone who is in the depths of despairing loneliness:

"Can a mother forget her baby, and have no feeling for the child she has borne? Even if she does so, I will not forget you! See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."

For those of us who are gifted with faith, and particularly those who share in the gift of a missionary calling as well, speaking these beautiful words to people who are desperately lonely or ridden with guilt, can touch their hearts in special ways.

"I will not forget you! See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." No-one should feel forgotten, lost. Why not? Because each of us is indelibly engraved in God's hands. Not matter what we have done in the past that we might be ashamed of, we are not lost. No matter what we are doing at this very moment that might cause feelings of guilt to arise, we are not lost. No bad habit or destructive addiction can obliterate our engravure on the palms of God's hands. No selfish decision made in the past, no bad action can cause us to be forgotten.

Not being forgotten by God does not mean being remembered as a failure or as a loser. It means being remembered as someone who is loved and worthy of being loved, as the image of a loving mother and baby conjures in our minds.

We are now in the season of Lent. Traditionally, this preparation time for Easter is a time of penance. It is a time for personal reflection and a time to acknowledge those areas of our lives where forgiveness is called-for. This could be a good opportunity to allow God to speak to us, to ask his forgiveness if we have been doubting his loving presence, for thinking that somehow we have been lost to him. Hearing our prayer, won't God respond as he did all those years ago to, Isaiah, "I will not forget you! See I have engraved you on the palms of my hands."?