#ows

The church exists primarily for two closely correlated purposes: to worship God and to work for his kingdom in the world ... The church also exists for a third purpose, which serves the other two: to encourage one another, to build one another up in faith, to pray with and for one another, to learn from one another and teach one another, and to set one another examples to follow, challenges to take up, and urgent tasks to perform. This is all part of what is known loosely as fellowship. ↗

— N.T. Wright

#church #fellowship #faith

Officially, the New Testament church at an early stage took seriously their responsibility for widows who lacked family or other resources. The office of deacon was instituted initially to address this pressing need. ↗

— Carolyn Custis James

#biblical #church #deacon #widows #women

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. ↗

— A.W. Tozer

#fellowship #friendship #holiness #sanctification #unity

Thanks cows. I appreciate your tastiness. ↗

— Craig Ferguson

#food #tasty #food

It was as if we'd only been gone the weekend. Or had we been gone a lifetime. Part of that was because when you've lived in Alaska, living in other places seems easier, less challenging, less threatening. Alaska had enlarged each of us. No one is ever the same after coming back from Alaska. ↗

— Peter Jenkins

#god #milk-booze-and-lightning #travel #whole-food #food

We don't have milk cows. People have so many stereotypes of people from where I come from - Oklahoma. We don't ride around in covered wagons, either. ↗

— Carrie Underwood

#come #covered #cows #either #i

She sealed his lips with a wanton kiss; 'Though I forgive your breaking your vows to heaven, I expect you to keep your vows to me. ↗

— Matthew Gregory Lewis

#kiss #vows #forgiveness

There was no sound, but she felt a movement, a shifting of the air in her room, the warmth of another presence. Isabel opened her eyes. He was there, at the foot of her bed, a single candle in his hand, dressed only in shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and breeches. “Forgive me,” he whispered as he set the candle down. “I could not stay away. ↗

— Elizabeth Hoyt

#isabel #thief-of-shadows #winter #forgiveness

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? ↗

— George Eliot

#death #fellowship #love #marriage #memory

There was something of relative freedom in that feudal gesture of the vow; for no man asks vows from slaves anymore than from spades. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#freedom #history #vows #freedom