We shall go back to Jackson County…when we go back, there will be a very large organization consisting of thousands, and tens of thousands, and they will march forward — Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 15:364
So, imagine you arrive at your ward one Sunday, and there is an announcement that your stake president will speak to all the adults. He tells you that the time to return to Missouri has taken place.
In this article, Peggy Noonan discusses a conversation Clare Booth Luce says she had with JFK in 1962.
She told him, she said, that “a great man is one sentence.” His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don’t have to hear his name to know who’s being talked about. “He preserved the union and freed the slaves,” or, “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War.” You didn’t have to be told “Lincoln” or “FDR.”
This got me thinking about one-sentence descriptions of Church presidents (for those interested in politics, a future post may consider U.S. presidents — this post will discuss only Church presidents).
Now, Mark Sanford is having an affair. What the heck is going on with politicians these days? Some possible answers: 1)They have always done this and now are finally being caught. 2)Politicians feel they are above the law, including the moral law. 3)The general lack of morality in society is infecting them. 4)We are all prudes and shouldn’t care. Personally, I favor 1 through 3, but it’s especially disheartening to see it happening to politicians I used to admire.
I think this article in the New York Times bears some discussion. To sum up:
No study, these critics say, has ever proved a causal relationship between moderate drinking and lower risk of death — only that the two often go together. It may be that moderate drinking is just something healthy people tend to do, not something that makes people healthy.
Bottom line: I don’t do nearly enough to discuss the Gospel with the people around me. But every once in a while I have a few interesting days where I do some good things. Read on to hear about one Latter-day Saint handing out a Book of Mormon to a Palestinian Muslim and offering a blessing to a non-member co-worker who knows nothing about the Church.