Reblogging From Myself Because This Is How Strongly I Feel About It 

It is time for Christians to stop ranking sins.

Frank Powell (via savedbymercyandgrace)

welp

(via poeticdarkbeauty)

The church is called to be the safest, most gracious, loving place on the face of the earth. No one should ever be shamed for their brokenness. No one can be left behind. No one’s sin deserves more or less attention, and we all have equal access to the Heavenly Father by way of His Son.

J.S. Park (via jspark3000)

Can you please watch the video "rapping for Jesus" and tell me your opinion on it? Thank you!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA just watched it, and I have to say that I always get a kick out of painfully awkward Christian videos. I make fun of myself all the time, because we can be a pretty ridiculous bunch. For example, I love the "Sh*tuff Christian Girls Say" video and quote it aaaaaalll the time hahaha.. "God is love, enough said. Hashtag, BOOM." There was one problem with the "Rappin' for Jesus" video, though. They kept saying that Jesus is their "n****"!! I think it was a misguided attempt to emulate rap culture and slang but really ended up being pretty disrespectful. I would personally NEVER EVER EVER EVER say that word! I know some people who say it, and they're like "I'm just joking" and I'm like "that's not funny." It's made sooo much worse by the fact that they are just. so. white. haha So..yeah. I honestly didn't take it very seriously and therefore found nothing excessively good or excessively bad about it. Except the n-word thing. That's not cool. What did you think of it? :P  Peace and love! -Katherine 

What is your biggest regret? None of that "i don't have any regrets" nonsense. Everyone regrets something.

Haha wow, you’re strict! Alright, I promise, no nonsense. To answer your question, it’s not quite that I don’t have any regrets, but I’m too young to have any serious regrets. I regret things like…dating a guy who was too young for me. (That was my biggest regret for years) For a while, I decided that what I really regretted was breaking up with him before I was ready, and not letting the relationship just run its course. Now I’m back to regretting dating him in the first place. I regret dating a guy who didn’t share my faith. I regret not writing down the phone number a guy gestured to me through an airplane window, cause that would have made a great story, but now it’s just a “what if?” I regret being an immature child who was accidentally insensitive and self-righteous and judgmental at times when I came into contact with people who were hurting. Most recently, I regret not taking University seriously and expecting to get my marks as easily as I did in high school. So you know what I mean, I regret little stuff. Nothing that I’ll carry with me to my dying day and whisper on my deathbed. But I agree with you that everyone regrets something. I don’t subscribe to the “it was exactly what you wanted at the time” or “never regret something that made you smile” mentality. I know I’ve made mistakes. So, so many mistakes. Countless mistakes. And there are lots of times that I know I hurt someone and I would like nothing better than to erase that decision I made so that the person wouldn’t be hurt anymore. But that’s life. My mom told me that no one expects me to be perfect (except me) and when we screw up, all we can do is apologize and keep moving forward, trying to do better everyday. Maybe if I’m lucky, my regrets will always be little, silly stuff like they are now. But if I was a bettin’ woman, I’d wager that someday, I’ll have a really big, really painful regret. But I hope when that day comes that I’ll remember that I can’t hold on to my regrets forever, and that I’ll be able to forgive myself and accept my imperfection and embrace the love and grace that God offers me despite me constant failings. :) Peace and love! -Katherine 

My Manifesto

I am a Christian. That means that I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He is there for me every hour of every day, He listens to me and comforts me, guides me, helps me, inspires me, empowers me, restores me, heals me, blesses me and walks with me through the bad times. He gives me life, peace, hope, joy and freedom. Most importantly He LOVES me. No matter how screwed up I am. He is my teacher, healer, redeemer, my best friend, my king and my Lord. He is my Savior.

 I believe in the one true God, the omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent creator and supreme ruler of the universe. I believe he sprinkled the stars in the sky and hung the sun in the vast expanse of space. I believe He created us with love and a purpose, and made the entire Earth just right for us. And He is threefold: He is at once The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. I believe that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. That the infinite was contained within the confines of space and time and that GOD dwelt among us in a human frame. And I believe that Jesus, the one who was absolutely wholly pure and perfect, was crucified in the most inhumane way possible to take the penalty for every time we screw up. I believe He died and three days later, rose again. He conquered the grave. He is the Lord of life and of death so that NOTHING, not even the powers of Hell can separate us from His love.

 That means that we are free. Free from the bondages of addiction, depression and self-harm. Free from cutting, from drugs, and from all the pain and hurt. Free from anorexia and bulimia. Free from porn. Free from the lie that says we have to fit in and wear the right clothes, be a size double 0 and have perfect hair, skin and teeth. Free from every time someone told us we aren't good enough. Free from all the times we say that to ourselves. Free from hatred. Jesus conquered all that stuff when the nails pierced his hands and blood ran down the rugged wooden cross.

 You know why? Because He loves us. We are his children, the apple of His eye, His treasure. More precious than any other of His myriad creations. Priceless. He created us in love with free will to be our own people and to do our own thing and He let us choose Him. And some of us didn't. But He longs to have a relationship with us. He created us to be His companions, in His image in fact, with a soul and a spirit that instinctively seeks to be close to Him. He created us to live forever, in paradise with Him.

 But we have alienated ourselves. God's justice demands that we pay the penalty for the mistakes we make. That's fair right? We screw up, we take the consequences. Is it still fair when the consequences for our sinful nature is that we can't go to Heaven and live forever, that we die? Well yeah. And God's name, YAHWEH, means "I Am that I Am." He will not go against His own nature and elude justice by not letting us pay the price for our sin. So that means we're all going to die.

 Because we all make mistakes. Come one now, you can't tell me you've never felt like you would do anything at all to take back that one day, or week or month. That you've never felt unworthy to live and you've hated yourself? I have. We are nowhere near perfect and we hurt ourselves and we hurt other people. In the depths of our hearts, we hold hatred for other people. And hating someone is such a terrible emotion that it's tantamount to murdering them in our heads. And our sin, the evil poisoning our hearts and minds, is killing us.

 That sucks though. We don't want to die. God doesn't want us to die either. But where is all this Karmic, Cosmic debt gonna go? What happens with all the mistakes we make? What about all this pain I've caused? It can't just disappear. SOMEONE has to take the consequences. Someone has to pay the debt. But it can't be anyone human, we're all in debt. It had to be God. It had to be someone who had never done anything wrong and who had no sin. And humans were the ones in need of saving so it had to be a human. So God stepped into our galaxy. He was incarnated in the body of a tiny baby boy in a lowly stable in Bethlehem, Judea. And He grew up, never did a thing wrong, but hated by the people He came to save. And they killed Him, all according to the plan designed by God. Then He came back. See how this works?

 Now, some ask, how can there be a loving God when there is so much bad stuff in the world? How can He love me so much if He lets me go through all this stuff? He could very easily make this world a perfect world. And He could remove murder, rape, adultery, divorce, war, terrorism, racism, slavery, oppression, starvation and poverty. But let's stop and think about how He would go about that. All those things are entirely out fault. It's not fate, it's not the devil, it's not random, this messed up world is messed up by the people living in it. So how would He get rid of all that stuff? Get rid of us? Or change us? Change the way we think? Would He have to go all the way deep down into the very fabric of our souls, the motives of our hearts and the patterns of our thoughts? Because we are human, and to get rid of bad stuff would be to either obliterate all of us or to remove our free will. He could make it so that we never have a single bad thought. But we'd all be robots. If we're all perfect, that means we're all the same. What's the point?

 No, He made us with a choice. We can choose Him. And He gave us this world and we messed it up. And we walked away from Him. But our souls long to be united with Him again. We don't know what we're missing but we know that something is. We are all trying to ease the pain, to fill the void, to make sense of this life. We search for meaning and significance and fulfillment in friends, family, relationships, travel, food, sex, drugs, career, politics, literature, money, possesions, music and religion. But none of those things will ever cut it.

 Hold on now, you say, you just listed religion. Aren't you preaching Christianity? Isn't that a religion? And you just said that religion's not gonna cut it. No no, religion is rules and traditions. Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus. Totally different. Don't get caught up in the "Don't do this, don't do that." Don't get confused by Catholic vs. Pentecostal. Those are denominations, but I don't like defining myself by a denomination.

 I am a Christian. I love Jesus and Jesus loves me. And I screw up but He forgives me. And when I step from this world to the next, He will be waiting for me and I will party up in Heaven with Jesus for all eternity. 

Thanks for the follow. Blessings!

No prob bro! Thanks for stopping by :) 

“People want to help people, no matter their own challenges.”

Josh Harvey, Innovations Lab Lead and Innovations Specialist, UNICEF Innovations Lab Kosovo

Tell us a bit about your background.

I was born and raised in Amish country in rural Pennsylvania. I have a BA in History from Dickinson College and an MA in International Development and Education from Columbia University Graduate School of Education. Between undergrad and grad school, I was a Teach for America Corps Member in Newark, New Jersey.

What do you do?

I lead UNICEF’s Innovations Lab Kosovo, which is a team of 14 split across three units. The first, the Design Centre, focuses on service design and technology for development (which spans from developing software tools that speed up and improve data collection and analysis by UNICEF and our partners, to building platforms that are used by governments to provide rights holders with access to information, to exploring new technologies to improve service delivery for children); another unit, the Youth Empowerment Platform, develops new programme models for adolescent and youth empowerment and participation; and the third unit - By Youth For Youth - uses an approach we built called UPSHIFT to train and support young people to build and lead innovative solutions to challenges in their communities.

My job is a mix of general management (the Lab has a bit of an unusual structure, so in addition to the programme teams, we have a product development team and separate operations, communications, and finance teams), design, strategy, and policy work. 

In addition to the Lab, I oversee UNICEF Kosovo’s Adolescent and Youth Unit.

What’s your working day like?

Work changes a lot depending on where we are in either the programme or product development cycles. I try to start most days with discussions out of the office with partners or peers. Then it’s a bit of organizational stuff—approve payments and check on spending, review programme monitoring data, work through HR, etc. etc. From there I spend about a third of the rest of the day on immediate things—providing input for our products, discussing plans and progress with our programme teams–another third on longer term things like new programme design or communications and fundraising, and the last third on external things—this might be coordination with our peer organizations or advocacy with government partners; often, it’s dialogue with colleagues in other UNICEF offices as it’s become pretty common that the Lab acts as a resource to others engaged in innovation and/or adolescent and youth work.

On the best days, I get to work directly with young innovators or lead design sessions with youth and partners.  

How would you describe your job to a 5-year-old?

I help a team of really smart, creative, good people help other smart, creative, good people solve problems. 

What did you want to be when you were a child?

I don’t know what his business card would read, but I wanted MacGyver’s job. Creative problem solving and helping people. I actually got closer than I expected!

How/when did you join UNICEF? 

I first worked for the United States Fund for UNICEF from 2009. There, I helped start the sports partnership team and was part of the two-person team that managed partnerships with pharmaceutical and logistics companies. I think my boss sensed my innate nerdiness so I ended up tasked with building a strategy to support UNICEF’s innovation efforts with access to tech sector resources, especially tech know-how, and be part of and lead some of the US Fund’s own innovation efforts. Over time, it became clear to me that UNICEF Innovation was where I wanted to be, so in January of 2013 I left the US Fund to lead the Lab in Kosovo.

What are the most satisfying parts of your job?

Young people come to us hungry to make things better for their communities, their families, their peers, and for themselves.  We teach them how. It’s an extraordinary feeling when 15, 16, 17-year-olds with whom we work are on national television recounting how their efforts have changed their communities.  

What’s the most challenging aspect of your job?

There aren’t always precedents for how the Lab’s work fits into UNICEF. That, and it can be difficult to balance with UNICEF’s long planning cycles the imperative to experiment, be agile, and pivot to capture emerging opportunities.  

What’s your best UNICEF experience/memory?

There are so many. One from fairly recently, though, was from a mission to Jordan to share with the office how they might incorporate some of Kosovo’s UPSHIFT work into their life skills and vocational training efforts in Zaatari camp. While we were in the camp, some of the programme participants rolled out a mobile library – a beautiful, cherry red tricycle with a lockable, weatherproof book shelf attached – that they built in order to provide access to books to children living in the camp. It validated two of my biggest beliefs: one, that people want to help people, no matter their own challenges; and two, that the most powerful thing we can do is give others the resources, know-how, support, and opportunity to solve the problems to which they feel close and about which they are passionate.  

What’s one of the biggest risks you’ve ever taken in your life?  

Well, there’s that time I left my job in New York to move to Kosovo…

What are your passions? 

Education. There’s an H.G. Wells quote: “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe”. I don’t have such a dire view, but I feel quote captures the notion that education—in whatever form it takes, not necessarily formal education—is what lets us, collectively, overcome our lesser natures; it’s what enables us as a human community realize our hopes. I often tell young people with whom we work that, if things are going to get better—in their communities, their countries, the world—it’s not going to be me or the Lab that does it; it’s going to be them. Our role is to give them what we know about how to do it.

What advice would you give others who are seeking a similar job as yours?

The practical response is that getting a job  with UNICEF is hard, and it’s extra hard to just pick up and be an “innovations person” as most offices don’t have a role focused expressly on innovation; better to seek opportunities related to your skills and experience and get connected to our great innovation network from there. The philosophical response? Be curious. That’s probably the single most important trait of someone working in this space. You’re never going to know, ex ante (or ever!), all the things you need to know to do the job well. Read everything, ask “what if..?”, wonder what’s possible, learn programme development, learn project management, learn coding, learn design, learn as much as possible. And then recognize when others have expertise, and empower them to use it.  

Who do you look towards for inspiration?

Mom and Dad. Neither of my parents’ families had the money or inclination to send them to college, they’re nevertheless the smartest people I know. My dad had an unfulfilling job with the post office for 30 years—awful hours, awful work—in order to provide for us, but always had time to help us and other people, and is the definitive jack-of-all-trades—he’s the best creative problem solver I know and his workshop is filled with awesome, hacked solutions. Mom cleaned houses while my sister and I were young to bring in extra money, and then when we were in college she went back to school. Afterward, she started part-time at an organization for abused, neglected, and abandoned children and was so valuable that she worked her way up to manager of administration. Mom is deliberate and thinks hard about how to do things right; she taught me to leave everything you touch a little better.

My colleagues don’t know that… 

I don’t hear well; if we’re out and there’s music playing, there’s a 50% chance that I can’t hear what you’re saying and I’m just smiling and nodding. :) 

I've neglected the questions in my askbox for soooo long so I'm gonna answer them now sorry ok bye

Why The Abortion Debate Is Such A Difficult One

The crux of the conflict of opinions on the matter of abortion is that different parties define personhood differently. I think we can all safely agree that murdering an innocent human is wrong, but what qualifies as an innocent human? At what point in development does this creature become a true person? What makes a person? Is it the soul? That intangible essence of existence, the source of all love and character? The thing that you and I fall madly in love with, the undefinable presence of someone's identity? What IS that? How do I measure that? How do I count and quantify and categorize that? How much does it weigh? What does it look like? There is no way to empirically define what makes someone a PERSON. If it's what makes them human, DNA alone would do that. But what is it that we see as sacred and precious? And more importantly, when does it occur? When is that cluster of cells infused with a a soul? When does it become more than just tissue and transform into the vehicle for an identity? When the brain develops? When the heart starts beating? When they emerge from the womb? Or at conception? Who really knows? This concept is so abstract that you can't possibly pinpoint a moment in time and say "there. THAT's when they became a person." Because as soon as they're a person, everyone unanimously agrees that they're worthy of life. As long as that issue remains grey, so will abortion. I've asked many more questions than I've answered. But if you are able to answer the questions I've asked in the space between your own two ears, you can formulate a stance on abortion. I know mine. Please, give it some serious thought. And good luck.

Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus