Mormon Musings

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”  ―  C.S. Lewis ,  The Great Divorce

“The devil flatters us that we are very righteous, while we are feeding on the faults of others…if you would have God have mercy on you,  have mercy on one another. ”  – Joseph Smith

There is one point we should be guarded against, and the brethren have endeavored to impress it upon our minds, that is, in our seeking to develop the resources of the earth and build up cities and temples and the various works that are incumbent on us, that we should not forget to keep our minds right before the Lord, that we should have his Holy Spirit abiding within us. When the cares of every day life increase upon us, in the business of forming settlements, pioneering and performing our labors from day to day, we are too apt to forget, that we should constantly seek to God with the same fervor and diligence for His aid as we do for spiritual blessings.  I find that I have to be careful while engaged in business, for I know that the tendency of my mind is to devote all my thoughts and all my time and attention to the business that is in hand—that happens to occupy my attention at the time. This is the tendency of people generally, and we have to guard against it, and for whic...

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly. Thomas H. Huxley, English Biologist, 1825

Aaron Thatcher is one of my heros.  There is nobody in the world I know who is more Christ-like.  Please check out his story on his wife's blog, found at  http://aaronlorraine.blogspot.com/ .  Help if you can by contributing here:  https://www.gofundme.com/supporting-big-a-aaron-thatcher

It would be unwise, of course, for the Church to tie itself to the provisional truths of science at any point in science's unfolding history. Ultimately, scientific truth will align with divinely revealed truth; meanwhile we can applaud genuine scientific advances, noting them without depending overly much upon them.  (Elder Neal A. .Maxwell, Men and Women of Christ, pp. 91-92.)

If you read the scriptures with this question in mind, 'Why did the Lord command this or why did he command that you find that in less than one in a hundred commands was any reason given. It's not the pattern of the Lord to give reasons. We can put reasons to commandments. When we do, we're on our own. Some people put reasons to [the ban] and they turned out to be spectacularly wrong. There is a lesson in that...The lesson I've drawn from that, I decided a long time ago that I had faith in the command and I had no faith in the reasons that had been suggested for it. ...I'm referring to reasons given by general authorities and reasons elaborated upon [those reasons] by others. The whole set of reasons seemed to me to be unnecessary risk taking. ...Let's [not] make the mistake that's been made in the past, here and in other areas, trying to put reasons to revelation. The reasons turn out to be man-made to a great extent. The revelations are what we sustain a...