Mormon Musings

“For it is not chance but choice that is involved here. Each of us has some control over finding joy. To paraphrase Elder Marion D. Hanks: “No matter how we live, there will be pain in this world. But misery is optional.” Think about it. Christ is against selfishness and sin – not because He is the giant spoilsport, but the other way around. He is against sin and selfishness because He is against despondency and melancholy and morbidity. He is against the shrinking of our capacity for fulfillment. On this He is the world’s leading expert. He knows. As the book of Hebrews has it, “For the joy that was set before him [He] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). Whose joy did He envision? Ours. He saw beyond our sins and stupidities and our clumsy mistakes. He knows what we have within us to become. And having paid the awful price in blood, He is entitled to alert us to reality. This changes the kinds of questions we ask of life. Instead of “What’s in it for me?” we ask, “What’s in it for tho...

“You remember the Prophet [Joseph] saw in panoramic vision at least nine of the Twelve in a foreign land. (He doesn’t say England, but that is where they eventually went.) He saw them gathered in a circle, without shoes, beaten, tattered, discouraged. Standing above them in the air was the Lord Jesus Christ. And it was made know to the Prophet that He yearned to show Himself to them, to reach down and lift them. But they did not see Him. The Savior looked upon them and wept. We are told by two of the brethren who hear Joseph rehearse that vision that he could never speak of it without weeping himself. Why? Why should he be so touched? Because Christ willingly came to earth so that all of the Father’s family could come to Him boldly, knowing that He knows what is taking place in us when we sin, that He knows all our feelings and cares. The greatest tragedy of life is that having paid that awful price of suffering 'according to the flesh that His bowels might be filled with compas...