One message of the Ten Plagues is how willing the LORD is to offer repentance.  Pharoah got ten chances.  And at any time the LORD could have kept the plague going until the children of Israel were actually out of the country, instead of ending it and then seeing whether Pharoah would go back on his promises or not.

Sin is always trying to bargain.  Sin is always saying, ‘well, I promised, but at the time this bad thing was happening so I had no choice, it doesn’t really count’ even though the bad thing was because of the sin.  Sin is always saying, ‘well, that bad thing happened but its over now, its a price I can pay,’ not admitting to itself that the price is going to be demanded over and over and over again, worlds without end, the ceaseless fires of hell.

There’s a lot of what appears to be dishonesty here–Moses and Pharoah keep  negotiating the terms of ‘going out into the wilderness for a few days to serve God’, the Israelites are told to ‘borrow’ treasures from their neighbors.   There is some context or symbolism that I am missing.

I have a lot of trouble seeing any particular symbolic freight in a lot of the plagues–maybe Zen will tell us why there were 10–but the three days of darkness and the death of the firstborn both have a lot of meaning.

Fiercely secular scholars identity the LORD alternately as a storm god or a plague god and the ten plagues of Egypt are part of their narrative.  But what He really is is a God outside context disruptions.  Whether its storms or plagues or enemies from over the horizon appearing at the gate–or a shepherd boy become king, or a carpenter become KING–he is the god who disrupts our stagnant mortal likelihoods.  Kings shall see that which they had not considered.  Whether eucatastrophes or catastrophes.  Or, in the Second Coming, both.

A very American religion

Probably connected:

https://ifstudies.org/blog/who-is-happiest-married-mothers-and-fathers-per-the-latest-general-social-survey

A fairly young person today referred to “Music and the Broken Word.”

“Burying your talents?”

https://xcancel.com/CaitlinJustini/status/2042701493766418873#m

My youngest said, “what’s wrong with frogs?”  It’s a good question.  I don’t know.  The quantities I guess.   Many such cases.

Tiny Egyptians or colossal frogs

The Bible says that God hardened Pharoah’s heart.  The JST says that Pharoah hardened his own heart.  I think they are both right.  Pharoah’s heart was neither hard nor soft until God caused him to be given the hard  choice, over and over and over until Pharoah’s heart was what it was.  He does this with all of us.  He will either harden your heart, or soften it–the choice is yours.

Pharoah has a real lack of integrity.  He lies, sure, but I mean that in the fuller sense of the word.  He is not whole across time.  He wants relief and makes promises to get it, but once the relief happens he is unable to integrate himself with the way he felt the day before, so he goes back on the promises, and the cycle starts again until the awful end.  The Pharoah and the plagues are a perfect parable for sin. (His over all approach to the Hebrews shows the same lack of wholeness.  He apparently wants to get rid of them–hence the edict to kill the baby boys–and apparently doesn’t value their labor–or else why would he set them to making bricks without straw, which is more difficult but also valueless; but then when Moses repeatedly gives him perfect opportunities to get rid of them the Pharoah is desperate to hold on to them.)

I don’t understand why Moses keeps asking just for permission to go into the wilderness to make sacrifices, with the implication that he and the Hebrews will then return.  This seems to be a lie, but why?

Exodus 7:

• a rod is turned to a serpent
• water is turned to blood

The Lovely One and were talking about King Noah’s people–they fled leaving their women and children behind at one point–at another point they sent their daughters out to meet with a hostile army–and the only conclusion we came to is that they seemed to have no concept of chivalry.  There is possible counter evidence, like the text of the Title of Liberty, but it still seems to be true.

Now, many say that chivalry is a Western invention, and though I don’t entirely believe that to be true, I guess there’s something to it.

Which means your primary experience in reading the Old Testament and also the Book of Mormon, when running across something hard to understand, is a sense of the eerie and of awe:  that people can be so different from you; that they are nonetheless objects of God’s justice and mercy.

Shoot, you should probably take the same position for anything pre-1940.  We should take C.S. Lewis seriously when he says he grew up in a different world than the one he died in.

My pain and suffering for Lent list was  meant to be theoretical and contemplative, but post-Easter they all seem to be piling up on me.  Allergies asthma fatigue injuries-from-fatigue.  I feel silly asking for a blessing for hayfever but I may gotta.

https://x.com/DataSciFact/status/2040193480006263023

An Answer: Elder Renlund’s story about his dog lady was an answer to a prayer I have been praying for a long time.  Too many balls.

An Easter Egg:  Elder Andersen quoting an altered version of the quote from Chariots of Fire which is itself an altered version  of Isaiah was an easter egg to me–I have spent the last week memorizing it.

A Theme: Not spread out over conference at all, but in the last session four talks in a row referenced the sealing power and the Kirtland temple.

A Contrast: the hymns covered the gamut, but quite a few of them had a militant and triumphalist air.  Even the children’s song Tell Me the Stories of Jesus ended with Jesus is King!  Jesus is King!  Which the arrangement emphasized.  In constrast, the talks were patient, loving, meek, and inviting.  The whole, put together, was transcendent.

Our Easter page is up.

Singing in the Easter Quartet and Easter in Picture and Words are both particularly recommended.

The Word made flesh.

Good Friday.  In the dark of the night past, all pain and suffering.

In the light of this afternoon,  death.

This night, the earth pains in childbirth.  God is being born.

A heart full of reverence for the great and conquering sacrifice.

The photo above, downloaded from Wikipedia is of Amundsen, Hanssen, Hassel, and Wisting at the South Pole at the end of 1911. There was a fifth member of the team, Olav Bjaaland, presumably the photographer. The bare heads for identification purposes is a nice touch.

These Wikipedia paragraphs about Bjaaland are cool:

At the turn of the century, Bjaaland, together with the Hemmestveit brothers were among the best skiers in Norway. In 1902, he won the nordic combined at the Holmenkollen Ski Festival, to this day the classic event in nordic skiing. In 1909 Bjaaland, together with five others were invited to France to compete with the best skiers of Europe.

On this trip, Bjaaland by chance met Roald Amundsen. The already successful explorer invited Bjaaland to join his forthcoming expedition to the North Pole. Bjaaland was thrilled, and still believing that they were heading to the North Pole. However, they left Oslo, Norway on 7 June 1910 heading south to race for the Antarctic pole against Robert Falcon Scott.

Scott’s team arrived at the pole a month after Amundsen’s and perished on their return. All four in the photo above would die before men would again set foot at the South Pole 47 years later in 1958. Hanssen died in 1956. However, Bjaaland was still alive in 1958 and would be until 1961.

It comes to mind today as an astronaut crew is orbiting as much as 40,000 miles above the Earth, able for the first time since 1972 to view an entire hemisphere at once. Five of the twenty-four who previously had such a view still live.