24. scotland. graphic designer & digital media student & christ follower & coffee addict & type geek.
isaiah 61:1-4
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bouncing baby boy,
too perfect for this world.
tiny fingernails, wispy hair.
ripped to shreds with a rusty nail;
a thousand shards of glass.
...
how scary is it that we teach our little girls that a wedding is the end of the story.
I just want to get closer to you by Kaye Blegvad.
“While we lament the apparent injustice of pain and suffering, how often do we forget that every good thing in a fallen world is wholly a gift of God’s mercy and grace? We think to question God when bridges fall but not to wonder at his grace that every bridge does not.”
(via guidemeinyourtruth)
I just feel like it is so obvious that when Paul is speaking about human dynamics he is working within his own cultural paradigm. He is speaking to his people and the times they were bound to. If you are going to universalize his comments on gender, you have to do the same with slavery. Did Paul think that slaves were ontologically or functionally inferior to their masters, would Paul be upset if he knew the societal dynamics of the oppressed changed because of liberation? If the slaves where no longer “submissive to their masters”, even though he appears to be advocating for and not against that system in scripture, would he be against that? Or was he a finite human tailoring a Christian ethic for the time he was in, including it’s prejudices and limitations?
I count the minutes and hours I’ve wasted saying to myself what I wish to do, but never carrying out my resolutions. I see the time spent on frivolous things, fear of the unknown, or just fear of rejection; however, I realize that it is my refusal to acknowledge that I need to act. I often deny that God works when I choose to work. It’s not that he does not guide me or use his Providence in my life, yet I’ve had the nagging feeling lately that his Providence is embedded in my decisions. Instead of me waiting for God to show up, I need to see that he is already here. I need to recognize that my discontent is his voice saying, “You know what’s wrong, so change it and know that I am working in the change.”. God is a God of the living, so who am I to complain when I am the one who’s not living life for all it’s worth. I chose to be complacent, but his grace instills in me a restlessness that is only quelled by living in his light. The time that I waste cannot be reclaimed, but I can choose to dedicate each day to God. I can begin each day reflecting upon his grace, then let that grace empower me throughout the day to live as Jesus lives.
Amen.
“
I remember a morning about 15 years ago. It was a particularly bad morning, after a particularly bad night. We – my wife and I – had been caught in one of those cyclical rows that reignite every time you think they’ve come to an exhausted close, because the thing that’s wrong won’t be left alone, won’t stay out of sight if you try to turn away from it. Over and over, between midnight and six, when we finally gave up and got up, we’d helplessly looped from tears, and the aftermath of tears, back into scratch-your-eyes-out, scratch-each-other’s-skin-off quarrelling. Intimacy had turned toxic: we knew, as we went around and around it, almost exactly what the other one was going to say, and even what they were going to think, and it only made things worse. It felt as if we were reduced – but truthfully reduced, reduced in accordance with the truth of the situation – to a pair of intermeshing routines, cogs with sharp teeth turning each other. We got up, and she went to work. I went to a café and nursed my misery along with a cappuccino. I could not see any way out of sorrow that did not involve some obvious self-deception, some wishful lie about where we’d got to. And then the person serving in the café put on a cassette: Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, the middle movement, the adagio.
If you don’t know it, it is a very patient piece of music. It too goes round and round, in its way, essentially playing the same tune again and again, on the clarinet alone and then with the orchestra, clarinet and then orchestra, lifting up the same unhurried lilt of solitary sound, and then backing it with a kind of messageless tenderness in deep waves, when the strings join in. It is not strained in any way. It does not sound as if the music is struggling to lift a weight it can only just manage. Yet at the same time, it is not music that denies anything. It offers a strong, absolutely calm rejoicing, but it does not pretend there is no sorrow. On the contrary, it sounds as if it comes from a world where sorrow is perfectly ordinary, but still there is more to be said.
I had heard it lots of times, but this time it felt to me like news. It said: everything you fear is true. And yet. And yet. Everything you have done wrong, you have really done wrong. And yet. And yet. The world is wider than you fear it is, wider than the repeating rigmaroles in your mind, and it has this in it, as truly as it contains your unhappiness. Shut up and listen, and let yourself count, just a little bit, on a calm that you do not have to be able to make for yourself, because here it is, freely offered. There is more going on here than what you deserve, or don’t deserve. There is this as well. And it played the tune again, with all the cares in the world.
”Nope, Watch this
WELL NOW. This is interesting. Thoughts?
stuff Christian singles hear.
I’m so dead. What is air. Worst thing is I’ve said most of these lines in the past to people struggling with singleness. Even myself at times.
(via thesweetermelody-deactivated201)
High-res
I Am.
High-res
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10
The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Oh God, I long to be in your presence forever. Amen.
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
(via mikeclevenger)
If our poor die of hunger, it is not because God does not care for them. Rather, it is because neither you nor I are generous enough. It is because we are not instruments of love in the hands of God. We do not recognize Christ when once again he appears to us in the hungry man, in the lonely woman, in the child who is looking for a place to get warm.
-Mother Teresa
Regardless of the content of the book, I like this bit on the back:
“We have to test everything.
I thank God for anybody anywhere who is pointing people to the mysteries of God. But those people would all tell you to think long and hard about what they are saying and doing and creating.
Test it. Probe it. Do that to this book.
Don’t swallow it uncritically. Think about it. Wrestle with it.
Just because I’m a Christian and I’m trying to articulate a Christian worldview doesn’t mean I’ve got it nailed. I’m contributing to the discussion.
God has spoken, and the rest is commentary, right?”
Who are you?
Do you know? Because I know who you are. I know exactly who God created you to be. But whether I know or not doesn’t mean anything. It’s only when you know who you are that things can change. So I ask again:
Who are you?
You’re a son of God. And to be blunt, I don’t mean you’re a son or daughter of God. I know some translations say that to be gender inclusive, but the original Greek doesn’t say it and by being gender inclusive, a lot of the meaning is loss. It’s not just about being adopted into God’s family; it’s not just about being a child of God. When it is said, “You are a son of God,” it’s saying that you partake in the inheritance. No, you’re not just a child of God. You are a SON! You receive the inheritance of God. You receive the blessing from God. You are a son of the living Father.
Who are you?
You are apart of the body of Christ. You partake in his flesh and in his blood. That means the blood of Christ is in you. It means the power that runs through Christ, runs through you. The authority that Christ held within both the physical and the spiritual realms is the same authority that you hold. You partake in his sufferings: you die on the cross with him. You partake in his glory. You partake in his joy. You partake in his royalty!
Who are you?
You are the bride of Christ. You are loved dearly by him; so much he wants to spend eternity with you! You are his family. You have been married to Christ; married into his family. You come under his protection, his provision. Ephesians 5:22-33:
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30because we are members of his body. 31 ”Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
This is your relationship with Christ. Submit completely to him, just as he will give everything to you, sacrificing all, even as he has already done, and you shall be one with Christ.
Who are you?
Do you know who you are? Do you know the power and authority that has been given to you? Do you know yourself as royalty? Do you know yourself as a son? Do you know yourself as a bride? Do you know yourself as being one with Christ; apart of his body? He has given everything in order for you to have everything. He has won the victory in order that you may have victory! When you begin to understand who you are, you’ll begin to understand what belongs to you and what doesn’t belong to you. You’ll know that the joy you feel is apart of the inheritance you have been given whereas the pain and depression is not. You’ll know that authority and power belongs to you whilst captivity and chains aren’t yours to have.
Who are you?
And if you don’t know that, then maybe it’s time you ask God to remind you just who it is he has made you to be.
Today is full. Today is full of reading Acts and Ephesians. Today is full of crying out to God, humbling myself before Him. Today is full of worshiping alone at the top of my lungs in an empty building. Today is full of long handed love letters to my Savior. Today is full of praying for people that I miss and love so dearly. Today is full of drinking tea. Today is full of watching videos from Africa with one of the sweetest couples I know. Today is full of free hot chocolate for people who look cold. Today is full of dancing through the store because I just cannot contain this joy that is inside of me. Today is full of planning my support video and how I am going to get through it without crying. Today is full of writing my support letters. Today is full of lists, one of a hundred things I am thankful for today, and one of groceries we need to buy, and one of homework, and one of verses in Proverbs I have yet to memorize, and one of fundraising ideas. Today is full of practicing Lugandan and French around the house. Today is full of singing in spanish (I have four songs down.) Today is full of sitting at the park, just watching the brutal waves crash against the pier (if grace is an ocean we’re all sinking.) Today is full. Full of love. Full of Joy. Full of growth. Full of fellowship. Full of THANKS. Full of Him.
Lovely <3 what a beautiful woman of God!
