When I’ve Lost My Way

When I’ve Lost My Way

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”  Psalm 119:105

 When I was a child I wandered down a path in the Jack Pines of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I don’t know if you have ever been alone in the woods of the UP, but it’s pretty scary.  Let me tell you how it happened. 

My father was a fur buyer (back when people wore fur coats) and once a year he would go up north to buy fur from the ‘backwoods trappers’.  My mother and I went along (with my schoolwork) and stayed for about a month.  My father also liked to trap along the Indian River and sometimes he took me along.  I learned to help him skin muskrats and mink.  I had a little pearl handle knife and I scraped the fat off the inside of the fur when he stretched them on boards. (I still have my knife and one of the stretching boards.) 

We rented a cabin at a place called Jack Pine Lodge and that’s where we were when I decided to have an adventure by myself.  My father was a deer hunter and so I heard a lot about his hunting episodes. One day I took my Red Ryder BB gun and went out into the Jack Pine woods looking for deer. (Yes, I can shoot a real gun.  Ask my husband who took me with him to show me how to target shoot.  Imagine his surprise when I shot a dime off a tree.) 

Back to my adventure, I wandered around out there and didn’t know how far it was from the cabin. I realized I was lost when off in the distance I heard people calling my name.  Then I got scared because I was supposed to be right by the cabin and was disobedient, so I didn’t answer their calls.  I hid behind a tree, but I think my red hat and gloves gave me away and before long I was found.  I didn’t get punished, but I sure got a ‘talking to’ and also a lot of hugs and kisses.  I did learn my lesson and never wandered off again.  

However, growing up, I often wandered away from God’s calling.  It took many years of wandering through the desert, just as the Israelites did, before I decided to follow God’s pathway.  As God’s children, we often wander off the path away from Him, but He continues to call to us even when we are disobedient.  

When we wander away from God, we can really get into a lot of trouble.  Some of us have found ourselves on pathways of destruction, and have been saved from them by the Grace of God.  If you were saved from destruction the way you were headed, it wasn’t by chance.  Listen to the Words of Psalm 40:2, “He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps.”  That’s what he did for me. 

After that, God did an amazing thing, “You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  Psalm 16:11.  Then he followed up by not only showing me the path of life, but he did this: “He restored my soul; He led me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake.”  Psalm 23:3  

To summarize all of this, God saved me, brought me out of destruction, established my steps, showed me the path of life and then led me in His paths of righteousness. Then he gave me an amazing truth; to study His Word and when we do it’s like a light comes on and shows us the way to continue on our journey of life.   

He is calling you and if you are far from Him, he wants to direct you to the right pathway.  Answer His call and you will find He is waiting with arms open wide.