Elder Bednar made a harge contrast between regular fear and godly fear.  He said godly fear creates peace.

I made a virtue chart but I’m not sure its accurate.  I think godly fear may not be a refinement of regular fear at all.  In other words, I don’t know that regular fear is a distortion of godly fear.  It may be something more like awe.

Anyway, here’s the chart.  Your thoughts urgently needed.

Last night I had a dream.

There were dozens of youth handcart treks that all converged in the same place.  Once they had arrived at the same mountain valley, under the direction of their leaders they joined together to build a temple out of rammed earth and long straight pine logs.  The earth they dug from the soil there, the logs they cut themselves.

In the way of dreams, when it was done it was a conventional temple inside but also was just one big hall where the whole group could meet.  They all gathered in and some of the Brethren came and sealed them all together as friends.

I didn’t say anything publicly out of respect, so you will have to take my word for it, but after President Nelson died I have been praying a lot to the Lord that now that we have temples a-buildin’ that need fillin’ He would direct the next prophet to tackle babies and families.

I was stunned.

My daughter said her roommates in Rexburg were talking about what President Oaks said.  The consensus was that they had been thinking of four to five kids, but were now thinking maybe 8.

I love the ambition.

Sixty Million Saints. . .

Six Hundred Million Saints. . .

Or to repurpose the old slogan folks used when people were complaining that the Church had too much money,

Make It a Billion.

Enjoy your day with family, the Word, and the communion of the Saints.

(more…)

If at some point in the next two days you want to share some insight or some feeling with friends, here you have friends.

There seems to be a natural virtuous cycle where we

Build more temples

=> More temple attendance

=> More temple weddings

=> More kids, more happy families

=> More need for temples

But somewhere along the way it seems to have broken down

This story is not mine. I first encountered it reading a newspaper in 1987. A family traveling to the temple had perished in an automobile collision. Father, mother, a recently returned missionary son, and three more younger sons. They were survived by a daughter and sister who was at Ricks College when her family all died. It was an astonishing thing to think about, and if that had been the end of it for me, I think reading of that tragedy would still haunt some corner of my mind.

Three years later I found myself living in the small town that had been that family’s home. I didn’t know this at first, but now and then I would hear some remark that led me to realize that I had arrived at an intersection with the dead family I read about. Their deaths were somewhere in the back of everyone’s minds and sometimes those thoughts came to the fore. (more…)

Honesty and dishonesty are obviously the opposite of each other.  But I  keep thinking about what virtue dishonesty distorts?  Optimism?  Hope?  Faith?