Have you ever lost someone near or dear to you?

I lost someone when I was eleven. My dad and mom and brother and two sisters and I were near Snoqualmie Pass, about fifty miles east of Seattle.

Waiting in line near the top of mountain slope was a girl about my age with a new red circular saucer. Compared to my black smelly inner tube, it was high tech.

I never saw anyone fly so fast down the mountain before. I continued to watch the girl as I made my own way down at less than breakneck speed. Most kids stopped shortly after the slope flattened out. But this girl just kept going and going. And then she disappeared.

I swung around quickly to my left, to my right. Everyone else around me was getting up and trudging back up the hill. But I didn't see the girl. She had been right in front of me. And then she was gone.

No one believed me.

I insisted, I saw her disappear. And we can't just walk away. Come back. Help me look for her.

Still no one believed. Except me.

The snow was wet and heavy that day. Off the beaten track, I soon found my boots sinking deeper and deeper into the snow pack. It took a full minute to cover ten yards. But I would not stop. Looking carefully, I could see the slight depression where the girl's red saucer had flown across the surface of the snow.

Scattered alpine trees stuck their heads out of the snow just ahead of me. I looked back and realized I was well off the beaten track. But I knew I had seen her go this far.

My heart stopped when I found the black hole. There, in front of me, the saucer's track stopped.

I lay on the snow with my head sticking out over the hole. The second I heard her crying, I started yelling. "Are you alright? Don't worry. I'll get help. I promise-I'll be back right away."

I didn't have time to go all the way back up the slope to my parents, so I accosted the first adult I found and breathlessly told him my story. He started yelling and other adults came running. Someone called up the slope and within minutes someone else was running toward us with a rope.

I led everyone along the path I had taken earlier. It took a while, but eventually a very wet and cold girl was fished out of the creek fourteen feet below the snow pack. She was reunited with her father, and all was well again.

For a long time afterward I pondered what would have happened if I had been the one riding the red saucer.

I also wondered why it was so hard to get anyone to believe me.

The fact is, sometimes the bottom does fall out from under us, God seems to disappears, and it's almost impossible to get anyone to believe us.

Has it happened to you yet? If you're saying yes, I believe you.

In my new book, If God Disappears (SaltRiver, Tyndale House Publishers), I address nine reasons why millions of American adults have left the church. In many cases, they've not only lost their faith in the church, but also in Scripture and God himself.

Believe me, as the son of an atheist--and as someone who "paid his dues" studying atheistic doctrines under a German existentialist philosopher--I know there's nowhere else to turn.

Thankfully, through my intensive study of Scripture, church history, and contemporary experience, I have become convinced that it's not too late for someone to come back to God--whether he or she walked away from the faith or felt God was the one who left.