Saturday, April 07, 2012

Ragamuffin Faith

Hey friends! As you can see, I've changed the look and, more importantly, the name of this blog (although I've kept the same url, divinemusings.blogspot.com, to keep it easy to get to my blog). Here's why.

From the time I started this blog I never liked the name I gave it, namely, "God and Me". I thought that name was painfully unoriginal and boring! But I couldn't come up with anything else that fit the purpose of my blog, so I stuck with the lame name, until now. I just got fed up with "God and Me" and decided to turn to Google for help (don't know why I didn't think of this years ago). I googled "christan blog name ideas" and, among other things, a list of the top 50 Christian blogs came up. While perusing that list my eyes fell on a blog named Ragamuffin Soul and I immediately knew that was the name for my blog. Unfortunately, it was already taken. What to do? What to do?

I looked at the name again and felt drawn to the word ragamuffin. The word refers to a person, especially a child, dressed in ragged, dirty clothes. As an adjective--as it's used in the blog name--it describes my spiritual reality precisely. I'm a ragamuffin believer. My faith is ragged, unkempt, and ill fitting. I try to wash it. I try to make it as clean, orderly, and well fitting as the faith of my Christian friends, or the confident Christians I see on tv boldly giving testimony of God's live-changing intervention in their lives.

I try to have faith like that. I wash and polish my faith to a wonderful sheen, but it always goes back to its natural, unkempt state. Doubts, confusion, weakness, the cares of this world, all distract me from "every word that comes from the mouth of God" and dirty my faith up all over again. So, that's what I have: dirty faith, distracted faith, smudged faith, saltless faith, ragamuffin faith. Yet, God has been kind to me and answered (some of) my prayers. He's seen me through proverbial thick and thin. Even though I am far, far from perfect and have dropped the ball more than once during most of my Christian walk, the Lord chooses to look after me. He knows I need him, and He responds accordingly. He embraces me, warts and all.

If you think God doesn't love you. If you think He has no use for you because your faith is less than stellar. If you think the Lord will just pass you by, you're wrong. God loves you, is interested in you and longs for a relationship with you, even if all you have is ragamuffin faith. Just ask me.

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