Coming out of Babylon

When did the agony of Christ begin? | America Magazine

This morning as I was contemplating my day, I realized it was Good Friday. I remember as a child thinking this day was horribly misnamed. After all, what was “good” about Jesus being nailed to a cross and suffering?

As I’ve been making my way thru the Old Testament with the Come Follow Me curriculum, I have been struck by a few “good” things. The Lord really, really wants us to be on the Covenant Path. Everything in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is set up to help you and I get on that path, and stay on that path. The Lord is waiting for us; cheering for us. He wants us to follow Him. His love for us is so very real.

Today we remember Christ overcoming our sin with his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. Sunday we will celebrate Christ overcoming death by His resurrection. When Moses was called to be a prophet he asked the Lord, who do I tell the people you are? The Lord answered back, “I am that I am.” The Lord is everything: leader, healer, bread of life, living water, He who overcame all, wonderful, counselor, our stone of help, the rock of our foundation the prince of peace, the Great High Priest Whose Name is Love, and His names are endless and eternal as are the works of His hands.

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Twenty Years Later

As I sit here late on a Friday night, the night before the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks there is a lot going thru my mind.

As we’ve weathered the last 18 months of our Covid year(s) I have finally grown weary of most of the rhetoric online and in the media, the fighting I see among friends, and the general rancor and invective that seems to permeate most corners of life these days. I’ve been spending more time off-line (listening to audio books, more to come!), on purpose so that I don’t end up in dark places in my mind. I’m already grumpy enough as it is, and I’m trying to live life such that I don’t say things I have to apologize for the next day. You’re welcome.

My thoughts this week have turned to that fateful September morning in 2001 when I watched in horror in my family room as the Twin Towers collapsed and the world changed forever. It would be a few weeks later that I found out someone I knew had died in the North Tower that morning, leaving a wife and three teenaged children widowed and orphaned. His death, and all of the deaths that day have always caused me to stop and reflect on mortality and to ask myself if I am making the most of my days.

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Church Music: I Will Walk With Jesus, and Go & Do

In the Face to Face broadcast back in November, two new songs were introduced which go along with the new Children and Youth programs in the Church. Normally, I am not a fan of what I call “church pop”, but these songs are really good and have brought a very strong spirit into our home as we’ve listened to them. And as an FYI — there is an entire album of songs that go with this year’s youth program found by following THIS LINK.

We started learning I Will Walk With Jesus in Primary today. It was raining on my face is all, I was not weepy or anything — primary kids are the best! I am really starting to understand at a deeper level why Pres. Nelson talks about walking the “Covenant Path” so much. We need to walk that path, we need to teach our children to walk that path at very young ages, because the world they are going to live in will try and take them in so many ways off of that sacred path.

The song for the youth (kids age 11-18) is called Go & Do and is the youth theme for the year, based off of 1 Nephi 3: 7. . In the official video the song is sung by David Archuleta. This song also talks about walking with Christ. Do you see the theme of walking the covenant path and walking that path with Jesus Christ? What a great message for our kids. What an invitation for all of us.

Timeline of Life

It’s been a week of contemplation for me. You see two friends died this week, one young, one older, both from cancer, a thousand miles apart.  It was also the fourth anniversary of the death of a best friend. I have been thinking and pondering my life as I’ve thought about all of their lives.

I had this mental picture of life as a ongoing timeline.  We hop on when we are born, and others join us and leave as relationships wax and wane, and eventually you jump off the timeline when you pass away.   For my younger friend, we spent our time on the line in high school.  None of us know what life will bring or how we leave — of course she didn’t know that cancer would take her, when we were singing in choir and worrying about the problems of youth.  We don’t know that when we join the timeline of life.  That is the greatness of mortality though — we have people, opportunity, good, bad, all of it.  Isn’t life wonderful?

My thoughts also have turned to how I spend my time, and the things I worry about.  I see the madness we’re continually descending into as a society and I am tired of it.  It doesn’t matter what goes on in the news, or who is offended about what.  What matters is that we’re teaching our children the gospel, teaching them to keep the commandments, and preparing them to enter the temple.  Everything else will either work out, or not matter.  The night before I’d spent several hours at a City Council meeting listening to people quibbling over stupid, trivial things.  I didn’t want to be there, but I had to make a statement.  When I was done, I sat down and decided, I was going to remove myself from this local political issue.  I just can’t waste my time on stupid things that have no bearing on eternity.  I want to live my life better, and work on those things that matter most.

“And now I say unto you, Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought:  But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.” Acts 5: 38-39.

It was fitting that last night in our family Book of Mormon study we read Alma 32: 21, “And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.”

I asked my kids what do we hope for, what do we have faith in?  My 2 year old just shouted out, “Dee-zus! (Jesus!)”  Yes, we do.  We hope for Jesus and the resurrection he made possible for us, and all of the other promised blessing we have access to as we live the gospel, keep the commandments, and really deeply let our covenants surround us and protect us and remake us into what God wants us to be.

This is what I know, I hope for, and have faith in the resurrection, for my friends, and my self.  The Plan of Salvation is real, the gospel of Jesus Christ gives us hope in these things and helps us to make the right changes so that we work out to be with God.

Easter Sunday

If I’m telling the truth, Easter is my favorite holiday of the whole year.  There is no tree, or presents, no parties, no cards to send, and pretty much no stress — at least for me.  All we have to worry about is celebrating the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the glorious resurrection, and the perfect plan of our Heavenly Father.  The Bulgarians call it “Великден” (Velik Den), or The Great Day.  I love that, because it really is the greatest of all days.

Today as I was doing my Come Follow Me study, I read Doctrine & Covenants 138, which is Joseph F. Smith’s great vision of the Christ organizing the spirit world for the preaching of the gospel. Verse 50 was particularly meaningful to me this time, it reads, “For the dead had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage.”  As I wrote in my Good Friday post, we were ransomed by Jesus Christ — our bodies will be freed from the earth and elements to be reunited with our spirits.  The scriptures teach us this will bring us joy. Continue reading