The greatest of all achievements that we can attain in our long and challenging journey through immortality is when our claim to discipleship of the Lord Jesus Christ reaches the stage where we can say, with all honesty, His ways are our ways and His thoughts our thoughts.

–thus Brother Shimabukuro

We have higher goals. That is the reason we are different.

Other posts from the Sunday afternoon session of the April 1992 General Conference

 
Marilyn Nielson Resurrection is another creation

My daughter did something neat this conference.  She wrote down all the things she laughed at and all the good stories.

There were some good stories and some deeply moving ones, like  Sister Aburto and Elder Palmer’s experiences with their siblings dying.

I wasn’t trying to write any type of note in particular, but as usual I seem to have gone for memorable phrases and pithy aphorisms

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My wife says that I have a subconscious rule that I must move things from one place to another at least a hundred times before I can bring myself to give them away. Suffice it to say, if you need help in this, there are better experts than I to teach you.

-thus Brother Bradford, from his talk Unclutter Your Life.

It is not really a talk about clutter. It is a talk about systems, and means and ends, and goals. (more…)

There are those passages in D&C 19 where God says something like ‘endless punishment doesn’t mean punishment without end, it means divine punishment, because Endless is my name”.  We usually take it to mean that God is proclaiming that his punishment is temporally bound.  But He doesn’t actually say that.  Its a puzzling passage, but I think a better reading is that he is telling us that we if we are concerned about how long His punishment is, we are asking the wrong question.  The better question is Whose.

Like when I put my kids in time-out because they have been quarrelling.  If the first question they ask is ‘how long?’ I know they need to be in for awhile, because they are not yet in a penitent mood.

To make sense of endless punishment, remember that you are amphibious with respect to time.  You swim in it and will forever, but you also breathe the air of eternity.  (More here).  So the punishment you experience at any one time will have an end at a future time–it is not endless–but that punishment will also be present with you always in eternity–it is Endless.

Punishment being God’s punishment means that it is terrifying.  The real punishment is that you have displeased Him.  Punishment being God’s punishment means that it is being administered lovingly–He wants all things to turn for your good.  Punishment being God’s punishment means that you can repent–what He has put out He can draw back.

I read a talk recently by Elder Oaks.  The whole thing is great but you would love it if only for the first three lines.

Joy is more than happiness. It comes from being complete. . . and in harmony with our Creator and his eternal laws.

The opposite of joy is misery. Misery is more than unhappiness, sorrow, or suffering. Misery is the ultimate state of disharmony with God and his laws.

Joy and misery are eternal emotions whose ultimate extent we are not likely to experience in mortality.

Also from the Sunday afternoon session of the October 1991 General Conference

Marilyn Nielson Find relief in charity

Some conventional Christians do not like the principle of self-reliance.  They think it impugns our dependence on God.  Others accept it, but as a temporal worldly principle only, like life insurance or brushing your teeth.

It is, however, a principle of the restored Gospel.

The difficulty goes away when we realize that self-reliance isn’t a statement of what our relationship with God is.  Its a statement of how God wants to teach us.  Self-reliance is an educational principle.  Self-reliance doesn’t mean God isn’t your father.  It means he is a father who wants his children to grow up.

Other Posts from the Sunday Morning session of the October 1991 General Conference

What is Self-Reliance?
Anyone or Anything Except the Lord

I recently read a talk by President Hinckley from what doesn’t seem like so long ago.  But I guess it is now.  The talk is Our Solemn Responsibilities.

For me the talk was like a switching yard.  It started a number of different trains of thoughts. (more…)

President Hinckley said that marriage was beautiful (giving his due to its difficulties) and then had this to say about divorce

Some of you within the sound of my voice could recount family sorrows in your own experience. But among the greatest of tragedies, and I think the most common, is divorce. It has become as a great scourge. The most recent issue of the World Almanac says that in the United States during the twelve months ending with March 1990, an estimated 2,423,000 couples married. During this same period, an estimated 1,177,000 couples divorced. (See The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1991, New York: World Almanac, 1990, p. 834.)

This means that in the United States almost one divorce occurred for every two marriages.

Those are only figures written on the pages of a book. But behind them lies more of betrayal, more of sorrow, more of neglect and poverty and struggle than the human mind can imagine.

We live and have lived in a country that is free for many practical purposes.  The downside is that to date the greatest persecutions inflicted upon us as a people have been inflicted by ourselves.  True, we live in a society that encourages and facilitates divorce.  But no one made us do it.

I sometimes wish we excommunicated for more divorces, though that would not cure the ugliness that led to the divorce in the first place.

Other Posts from the Sunday Morning Session of the April 1991 General Conference

Marriage is an Eternal Concept

The way to draw closer

Remember when our ancestors built their own meetinghouses?  I grew up in a little church by a stream that the ward there had built.  Some of the old men had laid the foundation.  Most of the people there had painted or remodeled or added a wing where we had classrooms.  There was a ‘cry room’ for nursing mothers that was built on a second story at the back of the chapel, with a little balcony, so they could still see the service.  Naturally, because there were no piped-in sound systems back then.

There were real joys to doing it that way.  At the same time, the hardship of building and paying was intense.  It is a blessing that we can now afford to hire builders.   But we only know it is a blessing if we remember there used to be another way.

Years ago I had the opportunity to preside over a stake whose roots reach back a great while. When the first ward was formed in that area, the local people, out of their own meager resources, bought the land and constructed the building without any help from the general funds of the Church. When that building became too small, they constructed a larger one entirely from their own resources.

By the time I came into the presidency of that stake the Church policy provided for matching funds, the Church to put up one dollar for each dollar provided by the local members. Under that formula, we in that area built six new chapels, in addition to providing funds for their maintenance and all of the activity programs carried on in the various wards.

There may have been a few murmurings, but the faith of the people overrode all of these. They gave generously, notwithstanding the stresses of their own circumstances, and the Lord blessed them in a remarkable way. I know of none who went hungry or without shelter. And I know something of the fruit of those homes which have produced a generation and almost a second generation who walk in faith and who have gone across the world and become men and women recognized for their various skills and integrity, as well as for their activity in the Church.

In those days we would have thought the Millennium had come if we had received word that the Church would bear all of the costs of providing land, all of the costs incident to building construction, operation, and maintenance, let alone an activity and administrative budget allowance of forty dollars per year per individual, based on the number who attend sacrament meeting.

It is not the Millennium, but this long hoped-for and prayed-for day has come. Though I have been a party to its inauguration, I still stand in awe at what has happened.

-thus President Hinckley

Other Posts from the April 1990 Member Finances Fireside

Marilyn Nielson Let us not quibble or complain

It’s April 1990.  A few months ago the people tore down the Berlin Wall while the guards stood by.  The lights that were put out a lifetime ago are going back on all over eastern Europe.

And Elder Perry is thinking about the people of Israel who became free from bondage many lifetimes ago and what Moses taught them to help them preserve their liberty and make it of worth.  Very interesting, especially what he saw as our equivalent of the rites and peculiar commandments of the Mosaic laws.  It is a talk called Family Traditions from the Saturday morning session of the April 1990 General Conference.

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In earliest biblical culture, the family was more than a parent and child unit. It included all who were related by blood and marriage. This kindred family, as I prefer to call it, was strongly linked by natural affection and the patriarchal priesthood. The elderly were venerated for their experience and wisdom. There were strength and safety in numbers, and, through love and support, members established solidarity and continuity.

-thus Brother J. Richard Clarke, Our Kindred Family, from the Sunday morning session of the April 1989 General Conference

“Strongly linked by natural affection and the patriarchal priesthood.”  That’s right.  (Read his whole talk, its good for the soul.)

Memory and the generations, that is what is best in life.  The kindred family is what you were meant for. (more…)

In today’s marketplace—yes, in your own neighborhood, town, and cities—scheming, deceiving promoters are making available to gullible purchasers all kinds of enticing offers. We are sorry to report thousands within our ranks are being duped by the glib tongues of those who offer and solicit in whispers. “Once in a lifetime opportunities” and “Just for you” approaches are unusual no more. Such offerings and deals should be avoided like a plague.

I believe the Lord wants us to become alarmed and concerned when we see the wicked and unscrupulous taking unfair advantage of the weak and uninformed. No Latter-day Saint should exploit another man’s situation, manipulate, lie, steal, cheat, or deceive. Our responsibility is to assist each other in avoiding involvements that can be devastating to our welfare.

-Elder Marvin J. Ashton, from his talk “Give with Wisdom that They may Receive with Dignity”

I’ve seen any number of people express the regret that the brightest minds in our generation are devoted to inventing subtler financial manipulations and more addictive online ad platforms. (more…)

A friend of mine … asked his son what he wanted to be, whom he would want to be like. His son named a member of the ward who lived nearby, a man he had admired for some time. Don drove his son to where the man lived.

As they sat in their automobile in front of his home, they observed the man’s possessions and his way of life. They also discussed his kindness and generosity, his good name and integrity. They discussed the price their neighbor had paid to become what he was: the years of hard work, the schooling and training required, the sacrifices made, the challenges encountered. The affluence and seeming ease with which he now lived had come about as the result of diligent toil toward his righteous goals and the blessings of the Lord.

The son selected other men whom he deemed models of successful and righteous living and learned from a wise father the stories of their lives.

-thus Rex d. Pinegar.  What an excellent model.  Young men in the church should be spending their time with older men.  The primary good of a camp out is usually the conversations over the campfire or while hiking.  It is really surprising how little the young know about the lives of their elders and how much they like to hear those stories when given a chance.

The Governing Ones is one of the more unusual and interesting conference talks I’ve read.  Still chewing on it, to be honest.

Brother Bradford starts with the principle that priesthood is a government.  The rights of the priesthood are rights to govern. (more…)

We are in the post-prandial stage of General Conference. (more…)