Lisa Harper Quotes

Well, now I felt horrible. I'd marred perfectly good ass cheeks for no reason. It was as if I'd sneezed on the Mona Lisa.

Even our deepest disappointments will ultimately prove to be gatekeepers for future delight.

Every single person on this planet is worth the trouble we might face in the context of sharing Christ with them

Here’s the deal, y’all. God. Already. Knows. His people are a hot, sinful mess, so when we simply acknowledge that and repent, He’s waiting with open arms. We don’t have to justify ourselves because Jesus already did that on the cross. So the risk of repentance doesn’t lead to punishment—it leads to the unilateral forgiveness and unconditional affection of our Creator Redeemer. Vegas only wished it had a payout that humongous.

God’s arms are always extended; we are the ones who turn away.1 —Philip Yancey

Satan’s strategy is effective because he sprinkles his poisonous brew with just enough veracity that we’ll swallow it.

Do I love God? To love God is to trust God, to choose God, and to choose God's way to peace and wholeness.

Sin is not about the personal imperfection of the self. Rather, sin is any act that breaks any of the relationships God declared very good in the beginning.

Believing Jesus means you’re willing to risk everything you are and everything you have based on everything He taught and everything He did. It means learning to love Him more than you love your own life.

We all need reminders that there is a huge difference between coaching from the spiritual sidelines and putting skin in the game. Between advertising for the cause and actually joining it. Between talking about it from afar and getting close enough for it to affect our comfort.

Typically, the louder a voice gets, the bigger the knot in my gut grows. So I have to turn my heart and mind toward our Heavenly Father and ask, “Is this pit in my stomach about today or is it about what already happened in the past or about what I’m afraid might happen in the future?

The sabbatical year would greatly hamper Israel’s ability to build an economy that would fuel a dominating empire. If all debts were forgiven every seven years and free labor was set free, the economy would be forced to recalibrate. Here we see God placing boundaries on the world’s capacity to build empire, similar to what God did at the Tower of Babel.

It was never meant to be a prescribed time and place for us to obsess about doing the appropriate thing at the appropriate moment all while wearing an appropriate outfit.

True to King’s words, White nationalists attempted to kill democracy because it demanded equality. But they lost.

When it feels like He’s not hearing our prayers because we aren’t getting immediate answers, He’s still moving mountains on our behalf.

We need an untamed Savior because… only a wildly redemptive Jesus can free us from the pain and bondage of past mistakes!

Fear and disillusionment. Courage and commitment. Intense emotion and unbridled passion. The ultimate risk of life in exchange for undeserved grace and a treasured spot in eternity.

I’ve been praying for that same kind of discernment lately. I want to recognize the dangerous, potentially biting characters in my story: the people who create constant emotional debris with their destructive personalities or who refuse to shed the skin of deception, the ones who threaten the God-with-me peace in my life. I’m learning to keep my distance and to pray for snakes, but not make a habit of getting down in the dirt to play with them.

This is a prayer for Jubilee—that economic system instituted by God when God governed the people of Israel in Leviticus 25:8–55. Jubilee came every forty-nine years. In the fiftieth year, all debt was forgiven, all property returned, all enslaved people set free.

In 1654, mixed-race Elizabeth Key legally challenged her enslavement on the basis of three points: (1) British law barred the enslavement of British citizens; (2) British common law established the citizenship of the child through the status of the father; and (3) British law barred the enslavement of baptized Christians.

The lesson God engraved on my heart that day was while I didn’t necessarily need the money, she needed to give it. The exchange itself—both the giving and the receiving—illustrates a key characteristic of Christian community. To open-handedly bless others from the riches God has so generously given us and to open-handedly receive blessings from others binds believers together in an interdependent, Jesus-and-others-oriented web of grace.

The far-flung love of Jesus is a direct challenge to the reigning Western supremacist philosophies and governance of the Roman Empire. The Romans were deeply influenced by the Greek philosophers, including Plato, who invented the concept of race. Plato imagined race as the various metals that people groups were made of. Race ordered society, determining how different people groups contribute to the republic.18 Plato’s student Aristotle introduced explicit human hierarchy, arguing in his Politics that some races are created to rule while other races are created to be slaves.

Like so many other things in the previous year, my politics had also been retooled by maternity. I began to suspect that modern feminism had gotten it at least partly wrong. . . . In devaluing the home and the vast range of domestic work--childrearing included--and in fighting a fight largely for the right to work outside the home, the modern feminist movement ignored a singular power already available to women and, maybe more important, to the collective imagination. Rather than fighting to re-invent the home, or to effect a real transformation of values, or to legitimize and legalize the domestic and childrearing work that so many women engage in--which is necessary to support any mother's work outside the home--we have found it easier to map power where it already existed. Is this really my only choice? Between the intense demands of an academic career (supported by full-time childcare) and the mind-deadening contemplation of Cheerios?

Jesus didn’t live an easy life or die an easy death. The glory of Easter was preceded by the sorrow of absolute rejection. Our Redeemer knows what it feels like to be stripped of all comfort and ease. He experienced the betrayal of best friends. He sobbed alone, without a single person offering support. Yet, instead of trying to drown His sorrows with a margarita or spilling His guts to a sympathetic stranger on a plane, He endured. He shouldered the greatest possible anguish, being completely abandoned by everyone, including God, so we would never have to carry that burden ourselves. I didn’t used to believe Jesus was enough for me. . . . It wasn’t until I hit the bottom that I found the love of Christ really is enough to sustain me, no matter what. Buckling under the weight of my own life is what helped me fall into the arms of God. I didn’t just stumble into His grace; I collapsed there in a messy heap! And you know what? It’s by far the best thing that’s ever happened to me. LISA HARPER Stumbling into Grace

I’m afraid my former life could sabotage the abundant future Jesus promised those of us who put our hope in Him.

God’s grace is available to everybody. Period. His is an unconditional, wholly inclusive affection. There is no skin color, country of origin, or medical condition that can make you incompatible with the love of Jesus Christ!

sprinkles

Do you feel me the way I feel you, Harper?

It may not be cold for you, but it might be cold for him. His body has been extensively punished, so he probably has a weak immune system right now. He needs to get home and rest, that’s what he needs to do.” “That sounds so boring,” Harper whispered. “What was that?” Lisa asked in a harsh tone. “N-nothing, Elder. Um, yes, I agree. Steve should go home and rest.” “W-what?” I looked at Harper, who winked at me right after she said that. “Oh, um, okay. I’ll listen to you, Lisa. I’ll go home and rest.

Aristotle did not understand race to be determined by the color of a people group’s skin, but he did understand it to be a determining factor of intelligence and whether a people group was “supreme” (his language) or created to be enslaved.

Within one generation you will be in the minority in the United States as well. When that day comes, you can wage war or you can lean into truth, lean into repentance and repair, and allow yourselves to be released—forgiven.

In the wake of the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, formerly colonized peoples and nations marched for justice around the world. They recognized the knee on Floyd’s neck as the same knee on theirs through the systems of colonization, enslavement, exploitative “apprenticeship” in the Caribbean, Jim Crow in the US, and apartheid in South Africa.

King wrote of the “unregenerate segregationist,” that these citizens “have declared that democracy is not worth having if it involves equality.”14

God charges the Hebrews again and again to remember that they were once enslaved in Egypt. This is the source of their humility—this is their grounding memory. People of European descent in the US lack such humility because they lack such memory. They have come to believe they are actually White, but Whiteness is a phantom.

Most Texan children are never taught that Austin imagined Texas as a slaveholding province of Mexico and incentivized new settlers to bring more slaves by offering more land if they did.

We wonder how our nation has come to its present moment. We watch as today’s courtier class—legislators, Fortune 500 businessmen, and celebrities—break every law with impunity. They bilk the system. They pay no taxes. They openly lie and cheat and steal. They even wage war on democracy itself through voter suppression and insurrection. These attacks on the core of American identity are swept under the proverbial rug. This 1662 law broke our nation—even before it began. That is our genesis.

In every corner of the world, a primary weapon of Western domination has been to cut off indigenous and other subjugated peoples from their lands, from their families and communities, and from the stories that tie them together. Colonization wields four crucial weapons of conquest in its arsenal of mass destruction: genocide, slavery, removal, and rape. These weapons hack people groups apart, separating them from land, people, story, and identity. These weapons yield for colonizers more land for production of wealth, fewer foes to threaten wealth, and low-cost or no-cost labor to grow wealth.

The world cracked apart the moment the first European explorers looked at indigenous people who had stewarded land for thousands of years and declared them “uncivilized” and therefore unfit to exercise stewardship of their lands—or themselves.

The Virginia House of Burgesses was threatened by the prospect of losing legal claim to generations of free labor and incalculable wealth. So it moved to close the loopholes that Key’s case revealed. It passed legislation in 1662 that was modeled after the Roman law of partus sequitur ventrem, which determined the citizenship status of the child according to the status of the mother, not the father. This shift allowed White slaveholders to continue raping enslaved Black women and producing mixed-race free labor with absolute impunity. British masters no longer had to acknowledge their children before the law, so their children had no claim to citizenship under British law. This single law laid the foundation for the legal construct of race in the US.

The world says, “Push to the front of the line!” Jesus says, “Go to the back of the line.” The world says, “Brand yourself and blast your accomplishments all over social media!” Jesus says, “If you want to be great you have to first learn to serve.

And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching. Hebrews 10:24–25

Happy. It sounds like fireworks, smells like roasted marshmallows, and feels like cannon-balling into a cold pool on a hot day, right?

Break out those party poppers, y’all—because happiness isn’t simply a possibility for believers; it’s God’s lavish and oh-so-accessible gift to help us live and love well in a world that’s often less than kind.

More often than not, the pain God allows into our lives isn’t punitive but rather a promotion God’s providence will never take us to a place where His grace won’t sustain us We don’t have to edit our emotions but can instead bring all of us to all of Him Grief is not the opposite of hope but rather proof of it

As author Barbara Johnson used to say, “We are Easter People living in a Good Friday world!

Doing life with other people is a divine gift . . . community is significant and life-giving and sacred.

They’re proof positive that no sin is powerful enough to catapult us beyond the reach of God’s grace.

Wowzaroonie—what a jaw-drop-inducing, biblical reminder that our Creator-Redeemer is not bound by time and space! That when it feels like He’s not hearing our prayers because we aren’t getting immediate answers, He’s still moving mountains on our behalf.

I’m so glad you don’t have it all together, Lisa, because if you did God probably wouldn’t use you much here.

How much more amazing is it that the King of all kings condescended from His throne in glory to make grace accessible to sinners like us?

Which proves that epic failures don’t have the power to sabotage our futures because God’s kingdom purposes have never been intrinsically linked to human capacity or a lack thereof.

grief is not an inclusive kind of emotion. That deep ache tends to be an isolating event. That despair tends to put uncomfortable distance between the heartbroken and observers. Especially if the observers haven’t healthily processed their own grief and loss. Thankfully, God doesn’t leave us alone in our pain, or consider us stupid for feeling it in the depths of our soul. He doesn’t stand at a distance whether we are in joy or grief. He weeps with us when our cheeks are soaked with tears, and He rejoices when we are brimming with joy. He bears it all right there beside us.

So don’t you think it’s incredibly cool that God chose Mary Magdalene—this woman who’d been totally oppressed and completely marginalized—for what is arguably the most important job in biblical history? To be the first witness of the Resurrection, the very first human to testify that Jesus had come back to life! I know I do. Because it encourages me that He can use anybody—any hot mess out there, including me!—to tell the story of His Son and change the world. He can take someone totally dominated by the enemy and transform them into someone totally dominated by the Gospel! Thank You, Lord!

entitlement is the archenemy of creativity, passion, and joy.

whether or not women are born more empathetic is hard to tell. But experts doubt it. In 2017 gender sociologist Lisa Huebner told Harper’s Bazaar that we should reject the notion that women are “always, naturally and biologically able to feel, express, and manage our emotions better than men”—and thus should be responsible for doing so. Of course, some people are able to handle emotions better than others because of their individual personalities. But as Huebner says, “I would argue that we still have no firm evidence that this ability is biologically determined.” Some compelling proof that women are indeed not born any more capable of empathy or connection than men comes from psychologist Niobe Way. In 2013 Way published a book called Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, which explores the friendships of young straight men. Way followed a group of boys from childhood through adolescence and found that when they were little, boys’ friendships with other boys were just as intimate and emotional as friendships between girls; it wasn’t until the norms of masculinity sank in that the boys ceased to confide in or express vulnerable feelings for one another. By the age of eighteen, society’s “no homo” creed had become so entrenched that they felt like the only people they could look to for emotional support were women, further perpetuating the notion that women are obligated by design to carry humanity’s emotional cargo.

For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his clothing, I will be healed.” And sure enough, as soon as she had touched him, the bleeding stopped and she knew she was well! (vv. 28–29 tlb) Her interaction with the Great Physician could’ve/should’ve ended right there because she’d gotten what she came for: physical healing. Plus, Jesus was en route to Jairus’s house, a leader in the community, to attend to his dying daughter (vv. 22–24). But instead, Jesus stops in the middle of a seemingly more important mission just to listen to her: The woman, knowing that she was healed, came and fell at Jesus’ feet. Shaking with fear, she told him the whole truth. (v. 33 ncv, emphasis mine) I believe Jesus stopped because, despite her medical cure, He knew her heart still needed care after twelve long years of suffering. So the Lamb of Judah paused for a moment to lean in and listen to one lonely woman’s entire story. Really listening—leaning in and giving our full attention to what someone else is communicating or attempting to communicate—is one of humanity’s most powerful expressions of compassion. Unfortunately, in our digitized, hyperstimulated, selfie and social-media obsessed culture, being actively present while someone else tells their true, unfiltered story seems to be going the way of the Dodo bird. I’m sure, like me, you’ve found yourself awkwardly trailing off and not finishing a complete thought because the person in front of you stopped paying attention as soon as their phone started vibrating. Leisurely, device-less conversation between two people seems to becoming passé.

We are surrounded by a great cloud of people whose lives tell us what faith means. So let us run the race that is before us and never give up.” —Hebrews 12:1a NCV

As activist and theologian Lisa Sharon Harper puts it, "Humanity is made in the image of God... To slap another human is to slap the image of God. To lie to another human is to lie to the image of God. To exploit another human is to exploit the image of God... to commit acts of physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, political, and economic violence against fellow humans is to attempt to crush the image of God on earth." Harper continues by explaining that "sin is not about the personal imperfection of the self. Rather, sin is any act that breaks any of the relationships God declared very good in the beginning.

Finally, for this exercise, fill a cup with water and consider the biblical image of well water. Imagine that the water in your cup is well water. What does the well water in your cup represent? In what areas of your life are you drinking water that leaves you thirstier than you were before you drank it? Now consider the image of living water. What might it look like to replace your well water with God’s living water? If you’re ready, dump out your well water. Let it go. Close your eyes and hold your empty cup in front of you. Say this simple prayer: “Fill me.

No place is home. People are home.

Theologian Lisa Sharon Harper writes that “Shalom is what the kingdom of God smells like.