Category: The Church of Jesus Christ

Posts about being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spiritual insights, and the like

LDS General Conference

The 179th General Conference just ended, so I wanted to put down my thoughts on it while I still have it in my head…

For me, there were a few things that really stood out. One was attending the temple regularly. There were a number of talks on this, actually. My wife and I try to get to the temple regularly, but each month it is a struggle to accomplish, and we miss more months than we should…

Another was a talk on living within your means by Elder Hales. My wife and I agreed that we tend to buy a lot more things than we really need. Part of it is that we encourage each other to get the things that the other wants, but in his talk Elder Hales told a couple stories, one about wanting to buy something for his wife when they couldn’t really afford it, and another about when he wanted to buy something for her when they could afford it. The basic idea wasn’t to never buy anything, but to live within your means, and to not buy things to try to impress others, and to save money for rainy days.

Elder Perry talked about the need for members to be major part of the missionary effort. It just struck me that I need to do more to share my feelings about the gospel to others and see if they want to know more.

Finally, Elder Scott, President Monson, and a few others talked about facing adversity–looking forward with faith. Elder Scott especially told a few very tender stories about some severe trials he has gone through in his life.

Solomon and Samuel

I’ve been reading the Old Testament, and have just started into 1 Kings; where Solomon sees God in a dream and asks for wisdom.

I never realized that what Solomon was asking for was help in fulfilling his calling as a judge over God’s people. I had never thought of Solomon as being someone who felt completely inadequate in the position in which he was placed before, but that’s the impression that I got reading it this time.

I don’t know why that surprised me, since both Saul and David have similar feelings of inadequacy. The stories of the first threee kings of Israel are really tragic, as each one has such promise; each one is supported by God and given help and understanding to make them equal to the task; and yet each one ends up rejecting God.

…anyway that was random, but hey, that’s what this blog is, right?

While I’m on the subject, one of my favorite people from the Bible is Samuel. I’m not really sure why he’s my favorite, but part of it is 1 Sam 3:19 – “And Samuel grew and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.”

What I like so much about this is that it is different from what I often consider prophets from doing. Prophets teach people the things that God instructs them to teach (for example, Mosiah 3:23). But this shows it from a very different perspective: Samuel doing his best to teach the people and God supporting him. That doesn’t mean that Samuel doesn’t teach the will of the Lord, or that he can make up his own rules or anything like that. It does mean that God doesn’t spell out every word that Samuel is supposed to teach. It means that it is often up to Samuel to decide what topic to teach, and when and how it is to be presented. But as long as he does his best, God will support him.

It’s not “OK, Samuel, I’ve written your next talk; here’s what you’re going to say.” Instead it’s “Samuel, I’ve taught you My gospel, now you need to teach it to others. Do your best and I’ll help you and support you in your calling.”

The little things

I had a rather neat experience yesterday. We had a ton of yardwork that we wanted to accomplish, but Ada was being very clingy and wouldn’t let Rosanne put her down, so Rosanne kept Ada happy while I fixed the sprinklers and started working on the back corner of the yard (we are trying to get that cleaned out and all the vines removed–this upcoming Saturday we’ll be removing the stumps).

By dinner time, I saw that there was no way I was going to get it done before dark working alone, but I was sure if Rosanne were helping we could finish it. so I said a quick prayer that Ada would calm down enough so that Rosanne would be able to help. I was impressed that Ada would not calm down, but that Rosanne and I needed to learn how to deal with that.

Nuts.

Oh well, I thought, I’ll just get as much done as I can on my own and finish it up later. A couple minutes later Rosanne came down saying that Janelle had just called, and wanted to play with Ada, so she was on her way over. She showed up in a few minutes, Rosanne was able to come out, and between the two of us we were able to get the job completed.

Now, God didn’t have to do that. I don’t think it really mattered, but it was just a reminder to me that He is concerned about us and He is very involved in our lives. I love seeing the little insignificant things that He does for us, not because it is so important on a grand scale, but because we are His children and He loves us (which is not such a little thing after all).