Almost as soon as I began looking for a “tagline” in connection with my fiction writing, this phrase came to me. A tagline is like a motto. So what do I mean by “Faith in Walking Shoes”?
I don’t mean anything complicated. Though I majored in Bible at a well-known Christian college, I am not a theologian. I simply believe that our faith needs to be real and something we live out in our daily lives.
My faith means everything to me, and faith means a great deal to the key characters in my novel. I don’t preach any sermons in it, and at this point, I reference only one Scripture. My characters with a lifetime of faith provide spiritual guidance to those who do not have it. My main character is one who went through the motions of faith but never made it truly her own.
In the development of the story, I made an effort to achieve a delicate balance. It has turned out to be more like a challenging tight rope. I want it to be clear to my Christian friends that it is indeed a Christian book, but I want to do that without filling it with Christian jargon. I want my non-Christian friends to be able to read it without feeling as if they have stepped into a strange and unfamiliar world. I even dare to hope they will enjoy it enough that it will whet their appetites for more.
That’s a big order, and only time will tell to what degree I succeed. Meanwhile, I will continue to make every effort to live out my own faith in the walking shoes of my daily life.
The phrase about the stepping stones and road blocks, under the title at the top of this page, was born a decade before the tagline about walking shoes. I am pleased with the way they go together.
