This week in Come Follow Me we get to read Acts 17. This chapter starts out with Paul and Silas making their way through Macedonia and Thrace, spreading the gospel and teaching the Saints. After Paul escapes the angry mob in Thessaloniki, he ends up in Athens, a city, “wholly given over to idolatry”. He goes to the Aeropagus, or Mars Hill, which is a place where people congregate to gossip and debate. While there he preaches the gospel. Continue reading
It’s been a week of contemplation for me. You see two friends died this week, one young, one older, both from cancer, a thousand miles apart. It was also the fourth anniversary of the death of a best friend. I have been thinking and pondering my life as I’ve thought about all of their lives.
I had this mental picture of life as a ongoing timeline. We hop on when we are born, and others join us and leave as relationships wax and wane, and eventually you jump off the timeline when you pass away. For my younger friend, we spent our time on the line in high school. None of us know what life will bring or how we leave — of course she didn’t know that cancer would take her, when we were singing in choir and worrying about the problems of youth. We don’t know that when we join the timeline of life. That is the greatness of mortality though — we have people, opportunity, good, bad, all of it. Isn’t life wonderful?
My thoughts also have turned to how I spend my time, and the things I worry about. I see the madness we’re continually descending into as a society and I am tired of it. It doesn’t matter what goes on in the news, or who is offended about what. What matters is that we’re teaching our children the gospel, teaching them to keep the commandments, and preparing them to enter the temple. Everything else will either work out, or not matter. The night before I’d spent several hours at a City Council meeting listening to people quibbling over stupid, trivial things. I didn’t want to be there, but I had to make a statement. When I was done, I sat down and decided, I was going to remove myself from this local political issue. I just can’t waste my time on stupid things that have no bearing on eternity. I want to live my life better, and work on those things that matter most.
“And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.” Acts 5: 38-39.
It was fitting that last night in our family Book of Mormon study we read Alma 32: 21, “And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.”
I asked my kids what do we hope for, what do we have faith in? My 2 year old just shouted out, “Dee-zus! (Jesus!)” Yes, we do. We hope for Jesus and the resurrection he made possible for us, and all of the other promised blessing we have access to as we live the gospel, keep the commandments, and really deeply let our covenants surround us and protect us and remake us into what God wants us to be.
This is what I know, I hope for, and have faith in the resurrection, for my friends, and my self. The Plan of Salvation is real, the gospel of Jesus Christ gives us hope in these things and helps us to make the right changes so that we work out to be with God.
Today marks the 175th anniversary of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage Jail.
I cannot express adequately my feelings for Joseph and Hyrum, other than to say, I am profoundly grateful for their sacrifice. I am thankful that Joseph, as a young boy, had the courage to “ask God in faith, nothing wavering”. I know that Joseph was the prophet of the restoration and that the Church of Jesus Christ continues today with the same priesthood keys, and authority from God. In 1842, as part of the Wentworth Letter, Joseph declared the following:
“The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” (History of the Church 4:540)
Last year I shared Doctrine & Covenants 135, and a video of the Tabernacle Choir singing “Praise to the Man”. Click HERE to read and listen.
Here are some other articles and media on this subject. I will update these links as I find more today:
96 Hour Timeline Surrounding the Martyrdom
Conference Talks about Joseph Smith
From the series, “Joseph” episode 49, The Martyrdom of Joseph & Hyrum Smith
Martyrdom at Carthage, by Reed Blake
John Taylor: Witness to the Martyrdom, from BYU Religious Studies Center, article by Mark H. Taylor
The Martyrdom and other Noble Dates in 2019
For many people their favorite holiday is Christmas. That’s fine — weirdos (just kidding!). In our house we’re summer people, especially Independence Day people. Starting about Memorial Day I begin to blitz the house with red, white, and blue decorations, my children wait for me to bring out the fire crackers, we read the Declaration of Independence the night before Independence Day, and we watch 1776 on the day itself. We carry our celebrations into late July and truly enjoy Pioneer Day and celebrating our ancestors and our country. I love this time of year.
Continue reading
Last year Pres. Nelson introduced the ministering program to the church. At the same time the old programs of Home and Visiting Teaching were retired. There was an audible gasp as he made these announcements. Online the prevailing sentiment I observed was, “Oh I’m so glad! Now I don’t have go visit anymore!”
Then there was me, I was really, really discouraged at the thought of not having a monthly visit. I liked to have my visiting teachers come to visit me. We sometimes had a gospel discussion. Most of the time we didn’t (moment of truth: I never liked the visiting teaching message in the Ensign, ever, and I would never share that). We just talked to each other. We listened to each other. We got to know each other. And to borrow a phrase from the old purple missionary guide, we “built relationships of trust” with each other, so that in times of trial or need, we could depend on each other. This was not always the case with my visiting teachers, but it was the case for the last seven or eight years. I have to be honest, I miss those monthly visits…. A LOT. I kinda miss the relationships I had with my visiting teachers, because I feel like that has disappeared with ministering. Anyone else? Continue reading