Mormon Musings

"You sometimes wonder whether the Lord really knows what he ought to do with you. You sometimes wonder if you know better than he does about what you ought to do and ought to become. I am wondering if I may tell you a story that I have told quite often in the Church. It is a story that is older than you are. It’s a piece out of my own life, and I’ve told it in many stakes and missions. It has to do with an incident in my life when God showed me that  he knew best. I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and went after it, and I cut it down, and pruned it, and clipped it back until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. It was just coming day...

"Sometimes, during solitude, I hear truth spoken spoken with clarity and freshness; uncolored and untranslated it speaks from within myself in a language original but inarticulate, heard only with the soul, and I realize I brought it with me, was never taught it nor can I efficiently teach it to another." Hugh B. Brown   There are certain ideas of God, and futurity, and the nature and fitness of things implanted in the human bosom, even while in the world; for there are many things which lead to reflection. John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, 5:244

I would suggest just reading (or listening to) the entire talk by Hugh B. Brown. Text is pasted on a "page" of this blog and original transcript and audio is available at:  http://speeches.byu.edu/index.php?act=viewitem&id=114 .   "...Then we proceeded to prepare what I may call a 'profile of a prophet.'  Perhaps you students would like to amplify what I must condense today and draw your own standard or definition of a prophet and see whether Joseph Smith measures up. We agreed between us that the following characteristics should distinguish a man who claims to be a prophet: 1. He will boldly claim that God had spoken to him. 2. Any man so claiming would be a dignified man with a dignified message—no table jumping, no whisperings from the dead, no clairvoyance, but an intelligent statement of truth. 3. Any man claiming to be a prophet of God would declare his message without any fear and without making any weak concessions to pub...

I would suggest just reading (or listening to) the entire talk by Hugh B. Brown. Text is pasted on a "page" of this blog and original transcript and audio is available at:  http://speeches.byu.edu/index.php?act=viewitem&id=114 .  …Perhaps I can do this more quickly by referring to an interview I had in London, England, in 1939, just before the outbreak of the war. I had met a very prominent English gentleman, a member of the House of Commons, formerly one of the justices of the supreme court of England. In my conversations with this gentleman on various subjects—“vexations of the soul,” he called them—we talked about business, law, politics, international relations, and war, and we frequently discussed religion. He called me on the phone one day and asked if I would meet him at his office and explain some phases of the gospel. He said, “I think there is going to be a war. If there is, you will have to return to America and we may not meet again.”...