Enjoy to the End

I apologize for not posting during November and the first part of December. I had surgery on my Carotid Artery to remove plaque that was causing it to be 90% blocked. Through a very fortituitous set of circumstances, the blockage was discovered and removed before it caused a major stroke. I am now blockage free all over my body. I bear testimony that the Lord is involved in our lives. I was greatly blessed to have been saved from a very possibly debilitating or life-threatening outcome.

The Ultimate Conceit

When I was younger, in my twenties and thirties, and even when I was serving as a bishop, I believed that only the people of the LDS church were righteous. I was sure that the Lord did not care about those that did not embrace the gospel. I was convinced that he did not answer prayers except for those who were members in good standing of the Church. I really thought that prayers were answered in direct relation to one’s standing in the Church.

Bear One-Another’s Burdens

This week in our priesthood group meeting, we had an excellent discussion about Alma’s charge in Mosiah 18:8 to:”…bear one another's burdens, that they may be light.”

Thoughts on Immortality

Recently, my wife and I rode through the cemetery past her parents’ graves, and as we drove around and past the graves of others, including President Lorenzo Snow, my mind turned to the people who are interred there. I thought about them living and loving, and earning a living, about their joys and sorrows, about their children and the legacy they might have left. Some folks had small stones, and some were considerably bigger and more ostentatious than President Snow’s stone. I wondered if their stone represented the only heritage they had to offer those left behind.

LO, WO, O

Often, there are interesting patterns in the scriptures. Recently, I was watching one of the great programs on BYUTV where three or four BYU religious scholars sit together and discuss certain passages of scripture. This particular program dealt with 2 Nephi Chapter 9. One of the men, (lamentably, I do not recall his name) suggested that the chapter had a lot of “WOs” and “Os” in it. He said that the WOs (wo unto…) identified things that take us away from the Lord, and that the Os (O the wisdom of God) identified things that bring us closer to the Lord.

Our Glorious Mother Eve

The LDS view of the role of “our Glorious mother, Eve” (D&C 138:39), is strongly opposite to the beliefs of most of the Christian world. We are considerably more optimistic because we understand that Adam and Eve went into the Garden to fall. We understand that the Fall was part of the foreordained Great Plan of the Eternal God (GPEG) (Alma 34:9) devised in the great council in heaven in which we as spirits participated and God the Father and his son presided. Joseph Fielding Smith said:

Shoes

My Mother told me a story recently about a new pair of shoes. It seems that, during the depression, when she would have been about 10 years old, like a lot of others their family had little money to spare. Some kind friends in the Church bought her a new pair of shoes.