The Meandering Mind of a Christian Woman

            I started making baked goods about a year ago. Naturally, I have shared my successes with pictures on Instagram and Facebook. When something turns out well I get very excited about it and I want to share it. Honestly, I should be equally, if not more, excited to share the gift of eternity with others too. Why is it so difficult? The human tendency of course is that we don’t want to be rejected by our peers. People are a bit more receptive to a chocolate croissant than they are to a sermon or testimony. If we really consider it, my croissant will lead to hardened arteries and eventually death while my testimony could lead to life, eternal life.              What excites you enough to share it with your friends and family? In my bible study this morning I read John 17:24 (Jesus is praying) “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”   As I read it,

“Christians sin, but sin does not characterize Christians.” (BSF – John lesson 21) This phrase captured my attention last week and I have been pondering it. There are plenty of us who are prone to looking at our individual lives and believing we aren’t THAT bad. Honestly, that in itself seems a little sinful in a ‘pride goeth before the fall’ sort of way. As Christians; we really need to compare ourselves to Christ himself, we are his disciples, meaning we (should) follow the discipline of love he demonstrates for us. Discipline: “ train (someone) to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience. ” Discipline is hard for the giver and the receiver. I am the youngest of six children, by the time I was growing up my parents were exhausted and divorced. My siblings had already put them through a fair amount of turmoil. I remember watching an episode of Bonanza as a kid and Pa explained to a young boy that parents sometimes spank their children because they

            Imagine you are standing in a circle with a group of people. You make mental notes of each person; brown eyes, big smile, thin eyebrows, a mole just under the left nostril and so on. There is one face that you cannot make notes on; your own. Your own face is one that you can never see first-hand, it is only through mirrors or pictures or perhaps another’s explanation that you can have any familiarity with your own face. This realization has occupied my thoughts a lot lately.  It is interesting that we cannot see something of which we are most critical. Yet, that is not what others see or notice about us. We lean toward focusing on the things about our faces that we don’t like.             This may sound a bit boastful, I present the following to make my point. I have quite lovely, deep, dark, brown eyes with appropriate eyebrows. Yet, the first thing I assume others notice are my flaws, I have a scar on my upper lip from a cleft lip at birth. In my mind that scar is a bu