We discussed Abraham and God’s commandment that he offer his own beloved son Isaac to be sacrificed in Gospel Doctrine today.   I think most people assume Isaac was a young boy, but it is worth pointing out that he could have been anywhere from about 10 to 36.  There are many Jewish traditions indicating Isaac was in his 30s at the time.  Here are some things to consider:

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. . . . Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities

In 2009 the full-time missionaries were pulled from our large ward and sent to a small ward, recently split, in a neighboring stake. This “other ward” has four sets of missionaries.  Our ward could be described as a typical transplanted Utah/Arizona/Idaho ward with a few true southerners. Pious yet worldly, are the  words to describe most of us. The news we no longer had full-time missionaries, was not well received by the members of our ward. After all, our  ward is upwardly mobile middle class, and we are accustomed to achieving success.  In all aspects of mormondom, we consider ourselves to be  well above average.  Our proselytizing failures are a blight on our wealth= righteousness checklist.  In contrast, the ward our missionaries were re-assigned to, can best be described as predominantly native Tennessee country folks plus single/married university students; with a few professionals such as a country doctor,  a small town lawyer, and a handful of college professors. This other ward is definitely not suburban upwardly mobile middle class. Humble and genuine would be the words to describe this other ward.

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Long ago, in the days before the internet, I was a timid freshman at Vassar College. Vassar is located in Poughkeepsie, New York, about an hour and a half north of New York City. Though there is a small airport in a town near Vassar, it was significantly cheaper to find your way to NYC and fly in and out of there.

There was a shuttle between Poughkeepsie and the NYC airports that was convenient and fairly inexpensive, and it was popular with the Vassar students, so I used that to get the airport when I flew home to Utah for Christmas. I, of course, planned to repeat the route to get back to campus when I returned after Christmas, but was thwarted after landing in NYC when I found that the shuttle company had gone out of business.

Insert panic and general freaking out here. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out this story.    President Obama has just named Scott Matheson, brother of Rep. Jim Matheson, to a federal judge’s post.  Rep. Matheson is a key “undecided” vote on the health care bill.  The story implies the timing of the nomination is fishy.

Under normal circumstances, it appears you couldn’t come up with a more qualified person than Scott Matheson to name to the court.  He’s apparently got impeccable credentials.    The timing of this nomination could not be more unfortunate for either of the Mathesons.