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we're eli and emma, just a couple of college students who love jesus. if you have any questions, prayer requests, anything, our ask is always open. :) about us and this blog // useful tags

[worshipgifs]

[wearenotlonghere]

Jesus didn’t die so that you could hate the ones He came to save.

He died so that you would love them; like He does.

There is no room for hate. None. No space for it. Love of Christ and bigotry do not belong anywhere near each other; they cannot exist in the same place. We must stop allowing them to exist in our communities, conversations, and Internet rhetoric. We must stop the evil of hatred from taking root. And only love can do that.

If you’re claiming your Christianity in one breath, and spewing hate with the next, you have some self examining to do.

[majestysnowbird-deactivated2016]

jesus wakes up with blood in his mouth. you are a child three, four, five born knowing the day you are going to die and the world cradled in your small hands does not feel holy jesus wakes up with blood in his mouth and it does not taste like wine. you are no longer a child thirteen years old with god in your head angels at your heels and nowhere is it written that their feathers are soft. jesus wakes up with blood in his mouth not today, not tomorrow, but someday. you are a young man now worry weary and thin like leaves you shake as your unbreakable hands your unasked for divinity sews back together that beggar girl’s ribs. jesus wakes up with blood in his mouth staining red his lips and teeth you are a man now holy with followers and your quiet hands raise up the lonely dead and for this they will spread your open arms string you up like a puppet on wooden planks jesus dies with blood in his mouth and nowhere was it written that he was unafraid. (in conversation, later, after rising, rising, rising, cracking again through the earth, after gentle solace of mary magdelene, you will ask your father why and he will say oh, my holiest child my little bruise i am sorry i cracked open your rib cage so that they could see the spill of my stars)

j.b. // “jesus wakes up” (via majestysnowbird)

[thecreativechristianap]

Now may the God who gives endurance and encouragement allow you to live in harmony with one another, according to the command of Christ Jesus, so that you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with a united mind and voice. ‬‬

‭‭Romans‬ ‭15:5-6‬ ‭HCSB

[yhwhlives-blog]

It is a good rule never to look into the face of man in the morning till you have looked into the face of God.

C.H. Spurgeon (via yhwhlives)

[gospelofthekingdom]

“Liberation theology begins with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcast, and the disenfranchised.  To do liberation theology is to do it with and from the perspective of those whom society considers as nobodies.  Incarnating theological thought among those who are dispossessed roots liberation theology in the material as opposed to simply the metaphysical.  Within the Eurocentric context, the primary religious question concerns the existence of God.  Among most liberationists, the struggle is not with God’s existence per se, but with God’s character.  Who is this God whom we say exists?  What is the character of God?  Whoever God is, God imparts and sustains life while opposing death.  Wherever lives are threatened with poverty and oppression, God is presente–present.  The God of the Gospels is offended by the dehumanizing conditions in which the marginalized find themselves.

Through Jesus, this God knows what it means to suffer under religious and politically unjust structures.  Because Jesus–in the ultimate act of solidarity with all who continue to be persecuted today–carries the wounds upon his feet, hands, and side, God knows what it means to exist in solidarity with all who are being crucified on the crosses of sexism, racism, ethnic discrimination, classism, and heterosexism.  Those who suffer under oppression have a God who understands their suffering.  Because Jesus suffered oppression on the cross, a divine commitment to stand against injustices exists, a stance believers are called to emulte.  In short, to know God is to do justice.  To stand by while oppression occurs is to profess nonbelief, regardless of any confession given privately or publicly.”

— Miguel A. De La Torre, Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians, Pg. 49-51

[milkboydotnet]

…the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context. Empires live by numbness. Empires, in their militarism, expect numbness about the human cost of war. Corporate economies expect blindness to the cost in terms of poverty and exploitation. Governments and societies of domination go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact. Jesus penetrates the numbness by his compassion and with his compassion takes the first step by making visible the odd abnormality that had become business as usual.

Walter Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination  (via blakebaggott)

[wearenotlonghere]

Jesus didn’t die so that you could hate the ones He came to save.

He died so that you would love them; like He does.

There is no room for hate. None. No space for it. Love of Christ and bigotry do not belong anywhere near each other; they cannot exist in the same place. We must stop allowing them to exist in our communities, conversations, and Internet rhetoric. We must stop the evil of hatred from taking root. And only love can do that.

If you’re claiming your Christianity in one breath, and spewing hate with the next, you have some self examining to do.

[clee]

It is not as a child that I believe in Christ and profess his teaching; my hosanna has burst through a purging flame of doubt.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (via clee)

[clee]

In contrast to all societies built on shared resentments and fears, Christian community is formed by a story that enables its members to trust the otherness of the other as the very sign of the forgiving character of God’s kingdom.

Stanley Hauerwas (via clee)

[clee]

What is asked of us is not the securing of a correct answer but something much freer and more creative. “The Christian and monastic model for discerning God’s will in a given situation is not that of finding the solution of a crossword puzzle”, says a recent Benedictine discussion of obedience, “ where the answer must be exactly right, fitted to some preconceived plan. A better model is that we are given building blocks and have to see what can be done with them, using in the task all our intelligence, sensitivity and love.

Esther de Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict (via clee)

[contrariansoul-deactivated20180]

Instead of dwelling in what at that time symbolized a centralized political power—a temple—God likes camping. God likes pitching a tent with the people of struggle. God is close to the tears of the poor, and those tears are often a long way from the centers of power.

Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President (via contrariansoul)

[progressivejudaism]

“In the Jewish tradition, the separation between prayer and action is slight. We’re mindful of the admonition in Isaiah where God says, “I don’t want your fast and your sacrifice. I want you to deal your bread to the hungry, tear apart the chains of the oppressed.” And Leviticus 19 tells us that to be holy in the way God is holy means to set aside a corner of our fields for the poor and homeless, to pay the laborer a timely and fair wage, and to remove stumbling blocks. These are religious activities just as much as prayer is. They are all woven together. After participating in the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of this century’s great religious figures and a close colleague of Martin Luther King, said, “It felt like my feet were praying.” Prayer is not just the communication we have with God; it is also the work we do to make God’s values real to the world. I think God listens to both kinds of prayer with equal joy.”

Rabbi David Saperstein (via rac.org)

[lucid222reveries]

Sometimes critics decry spirituality as individualism, but they miss the point. Spirituality is personal, yes. To experience God’s spirit, to be lost in wonder, is something profound that we can all know directly and inwardly. That is not a problem. The real problem is that, in the last two centuries, religion has actually allowed itself to become privatized. In the same way that our political and economic concerns contracted from “we” to “me,” so has our sense of God and faith. In many quarters, religion abandoned a prophetic and creative vision for humanity’s common life in favor of an individual quest to get one’s sorry ass to heaven. And, in the process, community became isolated behind the walls of buildings where worship experiences corresponded to members’ tastes and preferences and confirmed their political views.

Diana Butler Bass, Finding God in the World–A Spiritual Revolution (via ramsesprashad)

[beingbyzantine-deactivated20161]

If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find him in the chalice.

St. John Chrysostom (via womaninpearls)

[lucid222reveries]

Some of our Christian narratives have told us that the whole point is to get forgiveness from God. So we make ourselves “better people” by talking about how badly we suck in God’s sight, and thereby do our deeds of righteousness. Some of our Christian narratives have told us that the whole point is to believe the right things. So we make ourselves “better people” by guarding our theology and anathematizing those who disagree with “Us.” Those Christian narratives are impoverished and bankrupt. But their bankruptcy cannot compel me to give up the better one. There is a Christian narrative drawing us forward to a better world than the one we can create by simply groveling or by hurling invectives or by coming up with more and more clever things to say about the Truth of Who God Is. That better Christian narrative is the one that seems like it could never work. Not in a million years. It’s the one that tells us that finding ourselves in corridors of power is the surest sign that we have taken a wrong turn. It’s the one that tells us that if we will give up our lives we will find them in ways beyond our imagining. It’s the one that tells us that not only our own souls but the whole creation itself discovers the flourishing for which it was created when we take our eyes off of our self protection, self-righteousness, and self-rightness. Life comes when we look to our friend and lay down our life on her behalf. Life comes when we look to our neighbor and love him as we love ourselves. Life comes when we take a good long look at what we want, more than anything, and give that as the gift–what we would want done for us. I still believe. I still believe the story that tells me there is a God who honors this way of life which is, in its own way, the way of death. I believe that God honors it with life for the world. I believe that in its myriad micro-culminations it creates a more beautiful world than what we would create on our own.

J. R. Daniel Kirk, Why I Am Still A Christian (via ramsesprashad)

[grace--upon--grace]