The Meandering Mind of a Christian Woman

“You’re in remission.” These were wonderful words to hear, a great way to bring this year to its close. That word “remission” has been tumbling through my mind the last few days. If we break it down, re means again and mission means an important assignment to be carried out. It really describes every day of our lives; we are in remission daily as we carry out the assignments God has given us. 2 Corinthians 5:7:”Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away and the new has come.” Every day is a new day, a new opportunity and a new you!             In physical terms, remission is when the body is cleared of cancer, it is clean. In the spiritual world remission comes through the forgiveness we gain through Jesus Christ, we are clean. Anyone who has ever done a deep cleaning of her house knows how much better we feel when that is accomplished, it is a fresh start. The same is true of forgivenes...

            Have you ever felt the need to forgive God? That is a rather audacious thought, forgiving the forgiver?   However, if you have gotten angry with God, you have apparently felt he wronged you in some way, right? When someone does us wrong we must choose to either forgive or carry the grudge. If we get angry with God and stop speaking to him, we are carrying a grudge, we feel wronged.             Put simply, we either believe in God or we don’t. Our relationship with God is a lot like marriage, it’s for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer and any other set of opposites we want to throw in there. Like it or not, if we believe in God, we believe in his perfection too. We live in a sin filled world that can twist our thinking to believe we deserve a stress-free, worry-free, illness-free, whatever-free life. If we are honest with...

            “Guide me oh thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.”   I pray this phrase frequently, especially when I am feeling aimless (which is frequently). Decision making is certainly not a strong suit for me; even supposedly easy decisions like what’s for dinner are challenging. So often I don’t feel God’s leading while I am in the midst of something, it is usually in the retrospective that I become aware that he was indeed leading me.             While going through something I feel as though I am plodding along. I wonder if God feels like I’m plodding too. I had an image in my head this morning of God picking up each of my feet one at a time and moving them one step forward, rather like I would imagine one moving a mannequin. I know how frustrated I become just getting behind a slow person at the grocery store and that is only a few minutes of my...

            I have heard people say they don’t know how to pray. Yet, if you are capable of thought, you are capable of prayer. I do not understand why people want to make things more difficult than they need to be. Prayer is a conversation from the heart with God. There are no hard and fast rules to prayer, no set time of day, no specific posture needed, and no particular words that must be said.             I like to think that God is walking beside me all day, every day and simply talk to him as I do any friend. God is so big and so full of love for us he can and does meet us wherever we are. He can meet us in joy, in sorrow, in thankfulness, in complaint, in happiness and yes, even in our anger. He and I have a never-ending running conversation. When I have difficult days, when words won’t come, he helps me through the Holy Spirit, his word says; “ In the same way, hi...

            Today my brother-in-law, Bo, lost the battle but he won the war. Bo had been hospitalized since the beginning of the year. He had a stroke following heart surgery in January. In the past eight months he and my sister Aimee fought the bravest, hardest fight I have ever witnessed. She fought as his advocate and he fought to recover and get home to her, each because of love for the other. Bo had another stroke yesterday and that was the final straw. He gave up his earthly coil just a couple hours ago.             To the world; we lost. But as Christians, we know that Bo won! Bo now has eternal life, no more ventilator, no more pain, no more tube feedings, none of this earthly hassle. Aimee has some rough road ahead as she adjusts to life without him. She will have to learn what to do with her time now that she won’t be driving to the hospital every day. But Aimee h...

I bet you are familiar with the phenomenon of hearing your own voice in your head and then hearing it on a recording and saying to yourself, ‘I don’t sound like that, do I?’ I had a cassette tape recorder when I was younger and remember recording myself singing a Streisand song, believing I was spot on, Barbara had nothing on me. But then I played the tape back and was horrified by what I heard; good thing I hadn’t quit my paper route already. I find myself looking at the younger generation, or parents of young children and thinking, I didn’t behave like that. I have the tendency to gloss over my own past poor behaviors, do you? Not that I claim to have been the perfect young adult (far from it) or the best parent. However, I’m pretty sure what I remember in my head versus what really took place are in as much contrast as my internal voice and my recorded voice. God has redeemed me. He redeemed my parenting skills or lack thereof as demonstrated by the fact that my daughters ...

            The story of David and Goliath has been on my mind today. I have been thinking about that small stone that took Goliath down. I imagine David picking that stone back up after the battle and putting it in his pouch, one might think of it as a lucky stone. But David was God’s own heart, he knew the stone was simply the instrument but the victory was God’s. God had Moses give water to the Israelites through a rock too. Water that equaled life; from a rock!             Then I thought about the fact that Jesus is referred to as the “capstone the builders rejected” and also considered how on Palm Sunday the Pharisees and Sadducees wanted the people to cease their singing and Jesus told them it wouldn’t matter if the people were quiet, that “the rocks and stones themselves would start to sing.” God is also likened to a rock, our firm foundation.    ...