The Meandering Mind of a Christian Woman

            Since I have become a runner, I have come to the decision that having bruised toenails is a sort of badge of honor. When I look at them, it says to me that I have tried my best. There is something about it that makes me feel that I am a true runner. I would imagine that everyone has a badge of honor of some sort. Perhaps it is an award, a distance, a success, children, or a time span to deprive oneself of a bad habit such as smoking or drinking too much. We take pride in these badges and rightfully so, because we have worked hard to achieve them.               Perhaps you have seen the sticker that says, “ If God had a refrigerator your picture would be on it.” Have you ever considered that you and me are God’s badges of honor? The trick is that we are living, breathing badges of honor that make mistakes. I usually pray in the morning that the life I l...

            I’m pretty sure everyone is familiar with the many different dialects of English spoken in America. There is the classic Southern drawl, the east coast twang, the valley girl of the west, the Midwestern flatness (we don’t believe we have an accent) and of course Boston and Chicago have their own sounds too. When encountering a new dialect, careful listening is pretty important or there could be some major miscommunication.             It occurs to me that Christians have their own dialect too. We are a dialect within dialects, we have our catch phrases like, “too blessed to be stressed.” We might say we are blessed when the non-Christian might say lucky. This can lead to misunderstandings too. How often do we assume that people are on the same spiritual page that we are on? Up until the last ten years or so, I truly felt that the majority of American were Chri...