greaterthansparrows

Our lesson this week was on the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and Hyrum, his brother.  The Doctrine & Covenants includes   the statement and testimony of John Taylor, one of the apostles, who was present and badly wounded, but survived. (The other man in the cell, Willard Richards, was not hit.) The lesson materials had a long list of things that Joseph had accomplished in his calling to restore the full gospel of Jesus Christ, and how many truths, long lost, were understood through him.  I had marked the overarching things that stood out to me, like the Book of Mormon, the principal of revelation, priesthood authority, and temple work.  I asked for what things struck the sisters personally in their lists. The first comment was that in that First Vision as an answer to his prayer, Joseph knew that God was a Person with a tangible form, who knows us by name and loves us.  That was the idea which had brought her into the Church, that God was her Father wh...

I was assigned to speak for the ward Relief Society Visiting Teaching convention today, where they had the brothers take over for Primary in the last hour, and the Young Women join us, so that all the sisters could be in one place.  I wrestled over this assignment because when the request came, it struck me with guilt.  This was something I had a strong conviction of, but I had fallen down on it. I am committed that this will change. Visiting Teaching I was feeling   good about my spiritual preparation in my life, in service for my callings to teach, and with peace in my daily walk in the Spirit.   I was grateful to be doing well. Then Sister Meehan called.   Sisters, with this assignment I have the opportunity, the obligation, to confess and repent. I have been very blessed in teaching my stake class, in preparation and in the time we spend on Wednesday mornings—I have felt the Lord’s presence and help, and expressed my thanks to Him often.  ...

Watching General Conference, this performance of a beautiful hymn was beautifully done.  The usual soprano line on the last line of the verses is one repeated note, but it had not struck me that, like the hymn "The Lord is My Shepherd," the actual melody there is in the lower part, not the soprano.  On the final verse here, you can hear the choir sing that note while the soloist repeats the moving line.  That repeated final note, the one I always sing, is like a warm, sustained chiming of a bell, but the melody moving beneath it is lovely.  Next time the congregation sings this I may sing it entirely differently than I have done before. I love the words.  I love this understanding of the music, in this arrangement.

Finishing the Kirtland Temple Today we looked at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple , at the prayer given and recorded as Doctrine & Covenants 109 . This had not been an easy requirement from the Lord in the conditions of their lives, but they had been chastised for delay and promised that great blessings would be poured out.  There are numerous accounts of angelic visitations and manifestations; the dedication date was 27 March 1836, and work had commenced in June 1833, so it had taken almost three years and everything that the Saints in Kirtland had, and more.  Missionaries had pleaded for funds for this house of the Lord as they labored in their preaching.  John Tanner had sold considerable property to be able to offer funds for this undertaking, and many had neglected their livelihoods and been fed by families who were doing scarcely better.  But it was accomplished. The Prophet Joseph had set out a course of spiritual preparation.  Every...

Reading while visiting in Utah, I found a selection of essays, titled The Redeemer.   In one of them, Camille Fronk talks about feeding the five thousand in John chapter 6, the lad who had five barley loaves and two small fishes.  Jesus has been teaching a very large group of people who have followed him to the Sea of Galilee.  They need to be fed. She talks "first about the intent becoming known, looking for who has what to contribute--some might have said to themselves, I have enough to get  by, but not more, not enough to contribute; some might have reasoned, I have enough to get by, so I will not expect more from anyone else.  The lad simply volunteered what he had without waiting to see how it added up or whether it mattered, and the Lord turned that simple, forthright offer into a vast miracle." Isn't it easy to say, what could I offer? Not enough to matter.  Isn't it understandable to think, I don't need to bother anybody, I can get by?  I w...

http://www.seattlepi.com/comics-and-games/fun/Rhymes_with_Orange/2012-10-03/ It's easy to think that your eternal reward will be automatic, or that it's taken care of because your family has been in the Church for x -number of generations or you're related to or descended from someone amazing, like a General Authority.  It doesn't work that way. My grandfather gave a talk in church once, where he quoted Goethe as his theme:  "Before we can possess that which we inherit from our fathers, we must first earn it for ourselves."  I committed it to memory, intently.  He elaborated on that principle, giving several examples to illustrate which I don't remember forty-plus years later; he may have started with the fact that he inherited a family business, but had to learn how to operate it and grow with it himself, or he could have simply presided over its decline.  There were a couple of examples from so-called real life before he reached his deeper purp...

  We hear the stories of how poor the Saints in Kirtland were, and how the sisters gave up their china dishes to crush and add to the plastering of the exterior so that it would sparkle; I think we gloss past the deeper realities. Certainly I could not understand as a child what I can comprehend now as an adult. I didn't realize how desperate their condition was because most of the members had been sent to Missouri--there were only a hundred people or so, around twenty families, actually living in town, and given this burden. The very  next day after this rebuke was given (section 95) and made known, the brethren began digging the trench for the foundation.  The house was to be sixty-five feet by fifty-five feet, and the cornerstones were laid out six weeks later.  Missionaries were asked to preach the gospel in other communities and take up collections for the temple-building as they did so.  The Saints in Missouri were instructed that they should ...

  Our lesson this week was on the commandment, and then the rebuke, to build the temple in Kirtland (Doctrine & Covenants 94 and 95).  It was not quite four weeks after the revelation to build a house to the Lord for the work of the presidency, laying out the dimensions, that they were chastened for not having done anything. about it.  This doesn't seem very long--until  you realize that the first direction was six months earlier, in December of 1832 (section 88), and they had purchased land in March.  So May 6, laying out the plans, was telling them what to do next.  The Saints, and Joseph, didn't understand how essential, how urgent this house was.  In our parlance, they failed to get right on it. It would not be a full temple in the sense that we know them now.  The fullness of the temple ordinances would not be given until Nauvoo, but this would be no ordinary building.  The Lord tells them:   8  Yea, verily I say unto ...

While we were in Utah, we went up to Brigham City, sixty miles north of Salt Lake, to see the new temple while it was open for visitors.  It will be dedicated and closed to the public the end of this month.  Hubby grew up in Brigham City, and my father's family was one of the original founding families, so this was important to us.  The site is across Main Street from the old Box Elder tabernacle which my great-great grandfather helped build.  We took our grandchildren over there before they left for home, and they oohed at the carved wood rails and balcony, and took a walk up and around the upstairs perimeter. The site used to be the Central School, the elementary school where Hubby went.  It was torn down a few years ago, and we were surprised and excited when a temple was announced for Brigham City, an area we wouldn't have thought large enough to warrant a temple of its own--then to find out where it would be built was another surprise.  Brigham City ...