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...

By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination. Christopher Columbus

  28  Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard,  that  the   everlasting  God, the  Lord , the  Creator  of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?  There is  no searching  of His understanding.   29  He giveth power to the faint; and to  them that have  no might He increaseth strength.   30  Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:   31  But they that  wait  upon the  Lord  shall  renew   their   strength ; they shall mount up with wings as  eagles ; they shall  run , and not be weary;  and  they shall walk, and not faint. Isaiah 40:28-31

13  Who  hath  directed  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord ,  or  being  His  counsellor  hath  taught  Him?   14  With  whom  took  He  counsel ,  and  who  instructed  Him,  and  taught  Him  in  the  path  of  judgment ,  and  taught  Him  knowledge,  and  shewed  to  Him  the  way  of  understanding?   15  Behold,  the  nations   are  as  a  drop  of  a  bucket,  and  are  counted  as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance:  behold,  He  taketh  up  the  isles  as  a  very  little  thing.   16  And  Lebanon  is  not  sufficient  to  burn,  nor  the  beas...

...truth can never be confirm'd enough.   Though doubts did ever sleep. Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Act 5, Scene 1)

Believe in God; believe that He is, and that He created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that He has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which The Lord can comprehend. Mosiah 4:9

“I know that I am. I know that another is who knows more than I, who takes an interest in me, whose creature, and yet whose kindred in one sense, am I. I know that the enterprise is worthy. I know that things work well. I have heard no bad news.” Henry David Thoreau