[worshipgifs]

[humansofnewyork]

“There was a huge puzzle after the genocide.  How do you pursue justice when the crime is so great?  You can’t lose one million people in one hundred days without an equal number of perpetrators.  But we also can’t imprison an entire nation.  So forgiveness was the only path forward. Survivors were asked to forgive and forget.  The death penalty was abolished.  We focused our justice on the organizers of the genocide.  Hundreds of thousands of perpetrators were rehabilitated and released back into their communities.  These decisions were agonizing.  I constantly questioned myself.  But each time I decided that Rwanda’s future was more important than justice.  It was a huge burden to place on the survivors.  And perhaps the burden was too great.  One day during a memorial service, I was approached by a survivor.  He was very emotional. ‘Why are you asking us to forgive?’ he asked me.  ‘Haven’t we suffered enough?  We weren’t the cause of this problem.  Why must we provide the solution?’  These were very challenging questions.  So I paused for a long time.  Then I told him: ‘I’m very sorry.  You are correct.  I am asking too much of you.  But I don’t know what to ask the perpetrators.  ‘Sorry’ won’t bring back any lives.  Only forgiveness can heal this nation.  The burden rests with the survivors because they are the only ones with something to give.’” (Kigali, Rwanda)

[humansofnewyork]

Shortly after arriving in Lagos, my guide showed me a story that was being passed around Nigerian social media.  There was a woman who’d been stopped in traffic behind a crowded prison truck, and she witnessed a food vendor running alongside, shoving his food between the bars of the window, into the hands of the prisoners inside. By the time he was finished, he’d given away all his food.  The man was himself in desperate circumstances.  He was sleeping outdoors.  But despite having hardly anything to give, he gave away all his merchandise.  Amazingly, my guide Kola was able to locate the man.  His name is Ibere Ugochukwu.  And this is his story:   

“A few years ago I worked as an apprentice in a cosmetics shop.  I was supposed to receive a payment at the end of my term.  But I was warned by the other employees that the owner would find a reason not to pay me.  He’d always invent reasons to fire his boys right before their payment.  So I made the decision to quit.  But when I told him, he dragged me to the police.  He told them lies about me.  He told them I’d stolen so much money.  And they tortured me.  They tied my hands and legs and they hung me from the ceiling.  They beat me.  I went deaf from all the slaps.  For ten days I was given no food.  My fellow prisoners would share little bits of their meals when they were finished.  But some days I saw nothing.  Honestly I was about to die.  And I started to pray to God.  And on the tenth day, the guards decided that it would cause too much trouble to let me die.  They told my employer: ‘After what we did to him, he must be innocent.  Because he’d have confessed if he was guilty.’  They released me into the world like a madman.  And I’ve carried the memory ever since.  I promised myself that if I ever found someone in a similar situation, I would help.  So when I learned that prisoners pass down this road, I chose to hawk in this location.  I waited until I finally saw the truck, and I pushed all my food through the bars.  My fellow vendors couldn’t believe it.  They asked me who would pay me for the food.  I told them: ‘I didn’t do it for any man.  I did it because of what God did for me.’”  (Lagos, Nigeria)

[humansofnewyork]

“Since there are only two million Assyrians left, there’s a feeling that we might not survive. So we lean on our rituals. We lean on our church. We lean on our language, which nobody else speaks. It’s a ‘we’ culture. Everything is about the group. And if you wander too far from the group, you become a threat. Because the group can’t afford to lose anyone else. Your relatives will remind you that you should be proud to be Assyrian. You’ll be reminded that our people were slaughtered. So it’s tough to go your own way. For the last couple months I’ve been traveling alone. My mother is convinced that this is my breakout plan. She’s been so strict on me my entire life. But a couple days ago she sent me a text message that brought me to tears. It said: ‘I know that I said you’ve seen enough and that you should come back, but if you want to stay longer, and you feel that it’s safe, than you should definitely stay. And we’ll hear from you when you come back.’”

(Sydney, Australia)

[yesdarlingido]

Jesus thinks there are two kinds of people in the world:

our neighbors, whom we are to love,

our enemies, whom we are to love.

Sarah Miles

[minuty]

[worshipgifs]

[notentirelyauthentic]

“The natural/easy way of fighting for equality/justice is to dehumanize dehumanizers. But perhaps we could find a way to transcend that cycle. This is why I think it’s so important to learn to see the humanity of people who are not only outside of your tribe, but opposed to it. This is what I think ‘love your enemies’ is about. Until you can see the humanity of your enemy, you cannot hope to love them.”

— Michael Gungor

[asklaurenbritt]

do you think women can be lead pastors

After Jesus defeated the power of sin and death and resurrected three days after His crucifixion, the first people He appeared to were women. In a social and political climate when women’s testimonies were invalid, undermined, and ignored, Jesus gave women the gift and the responsibility of spreading the good news. The first mouth-pieces of the gospel—that Jesus was in fact God as He said He was—were women.

Do I think that women have the authority in Christ to stand before a congregation and speak that good news just as they have the authority to spread the gospel off of a stage? Yes. 

Do I think it’s ridiculous that women are given a diluted title of minister instead of pastor to ensure no one gets their panties in a wad though those two positions function the same as members of the body? Yes. 

Do I think God is offended by femininity taking positions of leadership in His church? Absolutely not. 

I think that Jesus’ message defied the patriarchal structure of His time and no aspect of His words or actions devalued the competence or revoked the invitation of women to be equal partakers and demonstrators of the gospel in all areas of the church’s body.

So, I mean, you tell me.

[yesdarlingido]

Ya know, being in a male dominant seminary that does not affirm female pastors, this is a good reminder. This was my position before I went to seminary three years ago, and my position on it remains.

[humansofnewyork]

“Several years ago my father used our house for collateral on a business loan. When things fell apart, we lost everything. My dad got depressed and fell sick. My mother was backed into a corner. She had four young children but no income. At the time she was a very feminine housewife. But she asked our neighbors to teach her how to farm. Then she convinced our landlord to let her plant an empty field. He told her, ‘If you can make it yield anything, we’ll split the profits.’ It didn’t succeed right away. There were a lot of pests. Some of the crops dried out. But my mother harvested whatever was left, and it was enough to support our family. She cut off her hair during this time. She got very muscular. She worked all day in the fields but still found time to make sure we went to school. If my brothers and I ever started crying, she’d tell us: ‘If I’m strong enough to do this, you’re strong enough to go to school.’” (Jakarta, Indonesia)

[luxuriousvulgarity]

Lemonade was not made for me, either. As a Singaporean Chinese woman, I would be lying if I said I was familiar with the complex, myriad ways Beyoncé explores black female personhood, sexuality, and spirituality in the film. But as a non-American, non-white woman, what I am familiar with is appreciating art that is not and will never be made with me in mind. This is a process that white people are now struggling with more publicly than ever. It seems to me that much of the pain in this process comes from entitlement, which often stems from ignorance. I wonder: Do white people in the Western world understand just how much of global popular culture is tailored to their tastes and their histories? Do white people in the Western world know that, for non-white people who wish to participate in and discuss global popular culture, being well-versed in white cultural and musical history is almost compulsory? Do white people in the Western world know how laughable it is that they feel excluded just because a popular work of art dares to be less culturally legible to them?

Beyoncé’s Lemonade: A Lesson on Appreciating Art That Wasn’t Made for You | Consequence of Sound (via luxuriousvulgarity)

[breanna-lynn]

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.

C.S. Lewis (via yesdarlingido)

[azspot]

Martin Luther King doesn’t want to be quoted, the saints of the church don’t want to be quoted, Jesus doesn’t want to be quoted, the Buddha doesn’t want to be quoted. They all want us to work. They all want us to make enlightened and self-sacrifical choices that make ourselves and those around us better people. Here is an exercise: Quote only those words that you are willing to do today. If we can’t act on what we quote, what is the actual value of it? Expecting others to do it and not ourselves is just arrogance and self-centeredness. Find a struggle and persist in it. Then be willing to change. Wouldn’t you like these words to have meaning for generations after us? I would. So let’s not hollow them out with our laziness.

I Quoted MLK, Now I Feel Better (via jspark3000)

[thehighpriestofreverseracism]

It works too! tried it myself

[milanadoraz]

I HAD NO CLUE THIS EXISTED??? BOOST

[lovechangeseverythang]

it works! also, make sure u have ur medical ID filled out in case of a medical emergency (this will pop up as well). you could end up saving your own life.

[jspark3000]

Hey: let’s have room in our heart for people who are “behind” or stuck or struggling or messed up. Not everyone is paced at your tempo. Not everyone can just change at the drop of a hat. Please do not judge what doesn’t make sense in your three lb. brain. It might be something you’d never struggle with, but this other human being does, and you don’t have to understand to love them. Just love them. Do not coerce a therapeutic ideology that rushes someone into an idealistic mirage. This will kill them. I get this wrong too, and I regret every moment I’ve dragged a friend into a forced epiphany. Be patient, be there, be engaged, and be at ground level.

J.S. Park (via jspark3000)

[yesdarlingido]

Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong. You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission. Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough. You will always find it because you’ve made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don’t negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.

Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone (via yesdarlingido)

[jadesofjesus]

We fight some wars that are only victorious in surrender

(via jadesofjesus)