Elder McConkie’s parable of the debtor explains how justice and mercy are reconciled in that great sacrifice.  The parable doesn’t get much into *why* the third party agrees to pay off the debts.  Love, obviously, but that’s not the focus.

On Sunday we had a really excellent talk about repentance and it got me thinking about the motives of the third party in that parable, as a stand-in for the Savior.  What if the Savior pays my debts because I am in a partnership with him and the goals of the partnership will fail without me–viz, making me as Himself.  In other words, what if He bails me out for love because he sees great potential in me?

So here’s the parable of the movie actor.

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Once there were sharks that were avidly intellectual.  They discussed ideas constantly.  They would swim a thousand miles to hear a new thinker.  Perhaps because they were sharks, they didn’t fit our idea that scholars must be weak.  They were active and something like daredevils.  They loved stunts.

And because they were sharks, they were blood-thirsty and hungry all the time.  They killed and ate and killed and ate with great gusto.  They would argue some point of scholarship, dive down into a school of fish gnashing and rending and slaughtering, swirl up out of the blood cloud to make an additional point that occurred to them, then dive back down.

I went looking for information on how to be speedy.  Everything I found was published by turtles.  They called themselves Rabbitologists.  They had swanky conferences and journals and everything.

At first glance, this is a generic screed against idol worship. But the points he makes are deeper than you might initially realize. Every point he makes applies every bit as much to us as it did to people making idols from stones and stumps. If anything, it applies to us even more.

So, as you read this section, think about how this would apply to us.

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Here’s another installment of the JG series on Learning About Scriptures that Everyone is Done Learning About.  Specifically D&C 19-22.

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When I first heard this phrase, I thought it seemed boring and anticlimactic. But as I have often experienced, the Lord hides many pearls, speaking in serious understatement. So we only see the depths, if we take them very seriously.

The Lord uses the term Covenants to describe not only the ordinances we receive, but also teachings and doctrine. I am increasingly seeing greater depths in Pres Nelson’s use of the term. The Covenant Path is not simply Repentance and Baptism. Not simply anyway.

Two things I have heard recently give me much to ponder.

“Our covenants are not merely transactional; they are transformational. Through my covenants I receive sanctifying, strengthening power of Jesus Christ, which allows me to become a new person, to forgive what seems unforgivable, to overcome the impossible.”

Joaquin E. Costa

Covenants create the kind of relationship that allows God to mold and change us over time and lift us to become more like the Savior, drawing us closer and closer to Him and our Father and eventually preparing us to enter Their presence.

Sis. J Annette Dennis

Today is the anniversary of my little daughter’s death, many years ago.  You can hear more about her in the Betsey Pearl tab above.

We are in the run up to Easter, and so my thoughts today are not just on the resurrection of the body, or of my body, but of the restoration of the bodies of my loved ones.  The Restoration doctrines of sealing and family are not really new additions to the gospel of atonement and resurrection; rather they are just working out its implications.

Christ was resurrected in the flesh to be with his friends in the flesh.  I look forward to that Resurrection to.  Not to be a body alone in the world, but to walk and talk with my friends, to hold my wife, to hold my little Betsey.

The corporal resurrection is a corporate resurrection.  It is not the resurrection of the dead we want, but the resurrection of our dead, and ultimately they are all ours.  But today there is one of that number who I am looking forward to seeing more than others.

I have not had any dreams for months.  Its eerie.  Regular friends of the JG know that I am a frequent experiencer of peculiar, meaningful dreams.  But not for many months.  I don’t know how to account for it and what it means.

At the same time, I have been subject to an almost frantic flood of business and project ideas, far more than I could handle in a lifetime.  This has always been a bit of an issue with me but in recent months its doubled and trebled.

It’s like my personality has abruptly changed.   Its similar  to the experience I think I mentioned here but cannot find right now where I repented of something and a big chunk of my personality, apparently unrelated, just fell away.  It’s wrenching.

A fun stem winder

https://xcancel.com/DouthatNYT/status/1898813621381243082#m

Atheists used to be villains. Now they are just sad.

More Isaiah for the interested student!

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It’s the last verse that gets me every time.  Lyrics here. (more…)

More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

-Tennyson

Oh, I say, how many shekels would a Starship set back Bertram W.?  They are dashed sleek, I mean to say, what!  A take-off from one’s chic flat with a touchdown at the Drones would be just the thing to avoid the hoi polloi.

Lent starts today.

Over the years I have had zero desire to participate in it.

Yet a couple of weeks ago when President Oaks released his video about Easter and the Easter season I have the impression that my family should try to observe Lent.  I shook the impression off.  I did not have a great desire to do something that seemed cringe and larpy.

A day or two later I was talking to my daughter and son-in-law and they said that they had been watching the video and had the impression that we as a family should participate in Lent.

So that’s what we’re doing.

The things we are giving up range from cheese to procrastination

We’re also trying to make it into not just a negative observance but also a positive observance by having one member of the extended family post a spiritual thought to the family chat each day.

What the Lord says about Himself clears up what righteous dominion in D&C 121 is.  It’s a verse found in D&C 15 and 16.

I speak unto you with sharpness and with power, for mine arm is over all the earth.

What caught my eye is the word sharpness.  There is a much-discussed verse in D&C 121 that uses the same term.

Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost

The whole passage is describing the ideal authority and its very winsome, he’s full of love, he doesn’t push people around, etc., but then there is this about reproving betimes with sharpness.  A number of Saints have manfully striven to argue that sharpness means something other than speaking cuttingly, but these attempts have run up against the brute fact that speaking sharply means what it means in English.

D&C 15 and 16 tie it all together though.

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