Mormon Musings

Search the revelations of God; study the prophecies and rejoice that God grants unto the world Seers and Prophets.  They are they who say the mysteries of godliness;...they saw the glory of the Lord when  he showed the transfiguration of the earth on the mount;...they saw the day of judgment when all men received according to their works, and they saw the heaven and earth flee away to make room for the city of God, when the righteous receive an inheritance in eternity...Fellow sojourners upon the earth, it is your privilege to purify yourselves and come to the same glory, and see for yourselves and know for yourselves. Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith , pp 12-13

M. J. Sobran wrote: The Framers of the Constitution . . . forbade the Congress to make any law "respecting" the establishment of religion, thus leaving the states free to do so (as several of them did); and they explicitly forbade the Congress to abridge "the free exercise" of religion, thus giving actual religious observance a rhetorical emphasis that fully accords with the special concern we know they had for religion. It takes a special ingenuity to wring out of this a governmental indifference to religion, let alone an aggressive secularism. Yet there are those who insist that the First Amendment actually proscribes governmental partiality not only to any single religion, but to religion as such; so that tax exemption for churches is now thought to be unconstitutional. It is startling  [she continues]  to consider that a clause clearly protecting religion can be construed as requiring that it be denied a status routinely granted to educational and charitab...

http://jdquotes.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/preparing-to-teach-the-principles-of-eternal-truth-orson-pratt/

http://jdquotes.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/purified-by-fire-john-taylor/

Harry Emerson Fosdick once wrote: “Some Christians carry their religion on their backs. It is a packet of beliefs and practices which they must bear. At times it grows heavy and they would willingly lay it down, but that would mean a break with old traditions, so they shoulder it again. But real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them. It is not weight; it is wings. It lifts them up, it sees them over hard places, it makes the universe seem friendly, life purposeful, hope real, sacrifice worthwhile. It sets them free from fear, futility, discouragement, and sin—the great enslavers of men’s souls. You can know a real Christian, when you see him, by his buoyancy”  ( Twelve Tests of Character  [1923], 87–88). Elder Perry, Nov. 1999

To those who may feel they have somehow forfeited their place at the table of the Lord, we say again with the Prophet  Joseph Smith  that God has “a forgiving disposition,”    that Christ is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, [is] long-suffering and full of goodness.”    I have always loved that when Matthew records Jesus’ great injunction, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,”   Luke adds the Savior’s additional commentary: “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful”   19   —as if to suggest that mercy is at least a beginning synonym for the perfection God has and for which all of us must strive. Mercy, with its sister virtue  forgiveness , is at the very heart of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the eternal plan of salvation. Everything in the gospel teaches us that we can change if we need to, that we can be helped if we truly want it, that we can be made whole, whatever the...

Once when traveling with Elder and Sister Russell M. Nelson, we left our hotel in Bombay, India, to catch a plane for Karachi, Pakistan, and then on to Islamabad. When we got to the chaotic airport, our flight had been canceled. Impatiently, I said to the man at the airline counter, “What do you expect us to do, just give up and go back to the hotel?” He said with great dignity, “Sir, you never go back to the hotel.” We rummaged about the airport, found a flight, kept the appointment in Islamabad, and even had a night’s sleep. Sometimes life is like that: we are left to press forward and endure frustrated expectations—refusing to “go back to the hotel”! Otherwise, such “give-up-itis” will affect all seasons of life. Besides, the Lord knows how many miles we have to go “before [we] sleep”! (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”). Elder Neal A. Maxwell, April 2004 General Conference http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2004/04/remember-how-merciful-the-lord-hath-been?lang=eng&m...