seedsandforests

[seedsandforests]

[seedsandforests]

here’s to a God who doesn’t get exhausted 

from the endless amount of times i’ve thought or said, 

“tomorrow i’ll change.”

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;    his mercies never come to an end;  they are new every morning;    great is Your faithfulness.”

[Lamentations 3:22-23]

[seedsandforests]

Great advice right here.

[seedsandforests]

[seedsandforests]

no one tells you how much of life takes practice. not just writing, painting, running, singing, etc, but practicing how to make friends. how to make the right ones. getting practiced at how to be a good friend, a good sibling, a good person. practice identifying when people haven’t earned that. learning to recognize your right to rage and, eventually, how to offer mercy. so much of life is muscle memory, and i’ve begun to realize there are so many more parts of ourselves to flex and stretch and strengthen than those we’re taught in anatomy lessons

[seedsandforests]

Flux by Orion Carloto 

[seedsandforests]

When was the last time anyone ever told you how important you are?

Maya Angelou (via amargedom)

[seedsandforests]

[seedsandforests]

[seedsandforests]

“Who attached these heavy wings on my shoulders?”

— Marina Tsvetaeva, from Bride of Ice: New Selected Poems; On a Red Horse.

[seedsandforests]

random snaps of my last house. In the mountains of Tennessee…

www.benjyrussell.net

[seedsandforests]

[seedsandforests]

[seedsandforests]

Here’s the thing–

Regardless of what you think of Christianity, what you think of the church, what you think of religion, what culture you’re from–

You need to do something with Jesus. You need to put him somewhere. Because Jesus of Nazareth was a real, historical person, and he made some pretty stupendous claims about who he was. You can’t say he was just a prophet because he never claimed to be a prophet. You can’t say he was just a good teacher because he claimed to be so much more than a teacher.

Jesus of Nazareth, a real, historical man, claimed to be God.

Jesus of Nazareth travelled for three years with a ragtag group of disciples.

Jesus of Nazareth was really arrested, really tried, and really crucified.

He was really buried, in a tomb with a stone in front of it, and a Roman seal, and a detachment of soldiers guarding it because the religious elite were afraid of what would happen if the disciples stole the body.

And yet, the body disappeared.

Either, somehow, the disciples–who thought he was dead, and went through all of the traditional burial customs–stole it.

Or, like he claimed would happen, Jesus of Nazareth, the man who claimed to be God, literally rose from the dead.

Put away your pre-conceived notions. You need to do something with Jesus, the man who claimed to be God, the man who hundreds attested rose from the dead. You need to, because if he was right, and if it really happened, regardless of what you think about religion–it changes everything.

[seedsandforests]

I want rooms filled with plants overgrowing and bookcases spilling over with well loved novels and poems and the sun in my windows to wake me without a care in the world and a lover who adores when I read aloud or dance to the songs I've memorized while studying instead of reading my notes but instead I am alone and scared of the world and that is not enough for me

[seedsandforests]

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

- Psalm 27:13