Stranded On Singles’ Survivor Island or the Island of Lost

I don’t think I have met one widow or widower who has lost their spouse who has not felt lost in life at the same time.  Lost from what their calling and purpose is in life.  The Lord told me one morning that I was on detour road in life right now so I am praying each day that God shows me /help me go on the correct path I am to walk on.

Show me the right path, O Lord point out the road for me to follow. Psalm 25:4

Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. Psalm 86:11

Sort of reminds me of that television series “Lost in Space” or Battlestar Galactica where you are searching to find earth.   Dorothy on the Wizard of Oz trying to get home.  The television series Lost where they could not seem to get off the island.  I like the movie Kate and Leopold where Kate says to Leopold, “He is a man out of time.”  He is man out of his time.  Albert Einstein was a man out of his time.  We could probably say that about any entrepreneur like Steve Jobs where they are a man out of time.  My father was an inventor, and he encouraged “forward thinking” in my life.  My husband was also a genius when it came to remembering facts and Math.

It’s the philosophy that you should shoot for the moon, and if you end up on the telephone pole, at least you shot for the moon.  For any of us who have had inventors in the family, we understand that forward progress, or forward thinking. 

Only problem is if “home” is actually where the heart is, than my heart is in heaven where several treasures are not on this planet anymore.  I’m trying to figure out how to get my heart back.   Sometimes I just want to rip out my heart.  It offends me and Jesus said if your eye offends you pluck it out, if your hand offends you cut it off.  I can’t seem to rip my heart out so I’ll do the next best thing and that is “protect” it with all diligence.  Guarding my heart is guarding my thought life.

Guard your heart (thoughts)  above all else, for it determines (or runs) the course of your life. Proverbs 4:23 ----this scripture is related to your “thought” life actually.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philip 4:7

You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Isaiah 26:3

For us who finally had a good marriage, we found we had to guard our marriage and one of those things is to protect our minds from thoughts of the devil – thoughts of division or anything that came against our loved one.  I find the same thing when it comes to my mind in serving God.  Guard my thoughts in loving God or any accusations against God in my life.  Satan’s ploy was to get Job angry at God and his plan was to get Job to curse God.  (Job 2:5 and Job 2:11)

Has not [the LORD] made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.

The Lord showed me that if I am angry at God for allowing my husband to die young then it’s like how my favorite dog used to growl whenever my son or I got close to his feeding bowl, I am biting the hand that feeds me.

Peter and the disciples lost their way too.  Peter decided to go fishing when he lost Jesus and denied him three times, but the Lord came and sought out Peter, cooked him breakfast and helped him catch a boat load of fish.   Peter was a believer so it was the not the same type of lost experience as when the first time Peter met Jesus and said, “Lord depart from me for I am a sinful man.”  Luke 5:8

It’s a different process and it’s known as “sifting” that Jesus warned Peter that he and the disciples were going to go through, but that he had prayed for them that their faith would fail not.

"Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." Luke 22:31-32

Peter and the disciples were not chaff  they were believers—the wheat

But not the wicked! They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind. Psalm 1:4

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire." Matthew 3:12

God is certainly capable of finding our island of Lost.  He has a “homing” beacon on us or a “seal” so he can find us.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Ephesians 4:30

The homing beacon in the Old Testament was the blood over the doorposts when the angel of death came over Egypt.  It was also circumcision of the male children which made distinctions in war time between non covenant men and those who had a covenant with God.  David knew the distinction and pointed out that Goliath did not have a covenant with God (Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 1 Samuel 17:36).   

Now we have a circumcision of our heart in accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.   Oh, the wonderful power of the blood of Jesus.  Don’t underestimate the power of the blood of the lamb!  It says we overcome by the blood of the lamb.

No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God. Romans 2:29

They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Romans 12:11

Here is a good commentary on the process of wheat: 

The first step in process of sifting wheat is to loosen the chaff from the edible grain, which is called threshing. The old fashioned way to do this is to spread the wheat onto a floor made from stone, concrete or tamped earth and to beat it with a flail. This is no longer done in the developed world, but in some places where machines are expensive and human labor is not, manual threshing is still common  The next step is called winnowing, where the loosened chaff is removed from the grain. The old fashioned way of doing this was to throw the grain in the air, where the lighter chaff would be blown off by even a decent breeze. The heavier grains would fall back to the ground below where they were thrown.  In the developed world, threshing and winnowing is done in a machine called a combine. 

Combines are called that because they combine multiple farm tasks into one process, in this case harvesting and threshing. These machines are one of the great workhorses of industrialized agriculture, allowing one man to do the work formerly done by many. The combine will drive through the fields, cutting and scooping the wheat into a machine that separates it from the stalk and then the husk. The grain is fed into a group of horizontal cylinders called rasp bars, which guides the grain upwards through grates and sieves, combining threshing and winnowing into one short process. The finished grain is then dumped into a trailer or following truck.

When I first became a Christian, I wanted to get the “heck out of Dodge” which is Indiana and be like Christopher Columbus and explore the world.  I joined this Christian missionary group that traveled around the U.S. and other countries.  With me being a single parent at the time of my departure from a relationship I had before I met Jesus, this missionary group of elders did not believe in sending single parents overseas, but only single women/men without children and married couples.  My life would be totally different right now.  I could have been living in another country on the mission field.  Don’t think that God does not do things for a reason.  We see how God works in the “under story” which was the life of Ester and Joseph to put certain events in motion.   

I ended up back here later from sunny Florida, due to a financial crisis from a divorce.  I know if  I move to some Caribbean Island, I can guarantee I’ll be scuba diving, a whale will swallow me like it did Jonah and I’ll end up at the Indianapolis Zoo.  I can’t seem to stay out of Dodge (Indiana) for long.  If you can’t beat them, than join them! i.e…..Hoosiers

Who knows what beach the whale is going to spit us on at times in life!  My next blog about the Island of Lost is those modern day Jonah’s, I meet them all the time.