A weary traveler came to the gates of the city. He was met by a deputation of the leading citizens of the town. The spokesman for the deputation stepped forward, and after complimenting the traveler on his fortitude and courage in traveling, and extolling the city to which the traveler had come, asked the traveler if the traveler had ever desired to be a king.
“Certainly,” the traveler replied. (more…)
His Majesty was in a rather pleasant mood this morning.
I was inspired by Bruce C.’s recent post on poverty and Steve Reed’s comment on the scriptures yielding multiple interpretations. Specifically, I was inspired to think about the parable of the Good Samaritan.
I do not reject the standard interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which the point is that everyone is our “neighbor.” I accept the authority of both tradition and the prophets.
But there is another interpretation, which actually fits the story better. (more…)
A beautiful woman, ice cream, little kids — the experience always exceeds your memory.
But if you have the experience often enough for your memory to be equal to it, the quality of the memory itself declines.
There is a way out of the dilemma. It is time and eternity.
His Majesty was in a happy mood this morning.
God expresses Himself differently to some of us. Whether because we can take more of Him than others, or whether because He has to condescend even further to our particular level, I cannot say.
Until Sunday, my latest example was in the temple, where laughing at myself brought me into harmony with the Spirit, who was also laughing at me. (more…)
Mormons have a very broad and democratic collection of biographies of their 19th Century predecessors. This is due to two causes. The first is our belief that family bonds have eternal significance which leads us to seek familiarity with our dead and to leave records that will allow our descendants to know us. The second is that the first Latter-day Saints felt they were eyewitnesses of something important and wanted to leave a testimony of it. Thanks to these factors, it is easy to find research on hundreds of second-tier associates of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and tens of thousands of multi-page biographical essays on nobodies written either first-hand by the nobodies themselves or by their children. These are of most interest to direct descendants of these people, so today most of those 19th Century Mormons are each known in detail to a few percent of present-day Mormons, but we like hearing the stories of others’ kin too.
A few of my favorites: (more…)
A traveler on a long journey came to a ford. Due to recent rains, the stream was swollen to a flood. The traveler was perplexed to know what to do and exercised his mind for a solution. (more…)
Last night Elder Cook spoke to the young adults of the LDS Church. My two older sons attended the broadcast in our stake center. (more…)
The story of Adam and Eve, Mormonly understood, makes a mockery of the idea of salvation under the Law.
The standard Christian view is that Adam and Eve were given a strict commandment not to eat the fruit, the Serpent tricked them into eating it, so God in his anger cast them out of Eden. The Mormon view is that Adam and Eve were given two commandments which could not both be fulfilled, so one (don’t eat the fruit), had to give way to the higher one (multiply and replenish the Earth). Adam fell that men might be.
Elder Oaks explained, more clearly than I can ever hope to, the Mormon belief that what Adam and Eve did was a “transgression,” not a “sin”:
For reasons that have not been revealed, this transition, or “fall,” could not happen without a transgression—an exercise of moral agency amounting to a willful breaking of a law (see Moses 6:59). This would be a planned offense, a formality to serve an eternal purpose.
The obvious theological objection to our doctrine would be: “God is perfect and perfectly just, so why would he give a commandment knowing that it could not be fulfilled? How is that fair?” As Elder Oaks says, the need for such a transgression has never been fully explained, and I admit that this one used to bug me a little when I was younger. Eventually I shrugged it off; it was a one-off deal, so why think too hard about it?
Then I served a mission, got married, had kids, and realized that God gives impossible commandments all the time. (more…)
The gentlemen here have some interesting answers to prayers. God, it seems, trusts us enough to unbutton a little. (more…)
“What do you think?”
“I already told you.”
“You know the answer.”
“Duh!” (As in “The answer should be obvious.”)
And after petitioning to “please bless so-and-so”, “What are you doing to bless so-and-so?” (more…)
They say that marriage and fatherhood takes away your fire and turns your blood to water. Daddies, they say, play it safe.
Ha! (more…)
Panaca, Nevada goes back to 1864 when it was Panaca, Utah, a couple years before Nevada’s boundary was moved another degree east to the 114th Meridian. It was an agricultural community supplying mining camps. “Tranquil and religious, Panaca never had an easy relationship with its rambunctious neighbors, but it has outlasted nearly all of them.” Today with a population of 900, it is the only dry town in Nevada. There is a Panaca Nevada Stake of the LDS church, a Panaca 1st Ward, and a Panaca 2nd Ward. The last time I was there was two nights before the 2012 eclipse. The next morning I visited graves in Enterprise, 50 miles east of Panaca.
A weird crime occurred there Wednesday evening. (more…)
