This morning my boss sent out an e-mail, inviting us to partake of the King Cake he had in his office. The e-mail reminded me that it’s Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) today and that I had no idea what a King Cake is.

Turns out the King Cake tradition (which started about 300 years ago in France) honors the Kings who came to worship the infant Jesus. The three colors often sprinkled on modern King Cakes represent justice (purple), faith, (green), and power (gold).

Properly done, a group will come together each week between Christmas and the Tuesday before the beginning of Ash Wednesday to partake of this reminder of Christ’s birth. The cake usually contains a favor (originally a bean, la fève) within, and whoever gets the piece of cake with the favor bakes the cake for the next week. Since many folks purchase King Cake for Mardi Gras, the favor in modern cakes is usually a tiny plastic baby on top of the cake, since there is no need to determine who gets the privilege/task of baking the cake for the upcoming week.

While some Mardi Gras traditions are not consistent with the commandments, the King Cake tradition can be a way to brighten the cold, dark days between Christmas and spring. I know my family will welcome a Christ-focused food tradition to weeks that have previously been void of any “fun.”

This weekend we traveled to Philadelphia, planning a grand day of fun events. Since it takes a few hours to get to Philly from DC, we drove up and spent the night.

My sweet, autistic daughter took a shower the next morning, and we heard her talking quietly, muttering, “Please, warm up…. please warm up…”

In an instant I knew what had happened. The hotel shower is new to her, so she had set it the way she sets our home shower. But that position wasn’t enough to make the water warm.

My daughter thought she just had to wait for the water to warm up, not realizing that she needed to do something. We were able to make it so her shower was warm, and life was good.

But this little incident got me thinking about the times when we wait patiently but unhappily, hoping things will get better, yet not taking action to make them better.

Millennial Star is pleased to welcome Jacob Hess, PhD as the newest M* permablogger.

Dr. Hess is a mental health professional who is passionate about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He has been blogging at his website Unthinkable.cc for several years.

Dr. Hess lives in the Cache Valley Region of Utah with his family.

Amulek’s sermon on procrastination[ref]Alma 34[/ref] was mentioned in a letter from a missionary this past week. This made me curious about the use of the term “procrastination” in scripture.

This week’s study in Come, Follow Me also mentions perfection, with helpful exploration of the Greek etymology from then-Elder Nelson. Specifically, the word used in Greek that we translate “be ye therefore perfect” is not speaking of freedom from error, but arrival at a distant goal.

Procrastinating the Day of Our Repentance

There are three times where this wording arises in the Book of Mormon.

1. Alma preaches to the people of Ammonihah (Alma 13):
   27 And now, my brethren, I ^awish from the inmost part of my heart, yea, with great ^banxiety even unto pain, that ye would hearken unto my words, and cast off your sins, and not ^cprocrastinate the day of your repentance;
2. Amulek (of Ammonihah fame) preaches to the Zoramites (Alma 34):
   35 For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become ^asubjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth ^bseal you his…; 
3. Samuel the Lamanite preaching to the wicked Nephites (Helaman 13) saying:
   38 But behold, your ^adays of probation are past; ye have ^bprocrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure…;

It is noteworthy that each of these pronouncements is to a people who are considered “ripe in iniquity” in the period immediately before disaster. This is not procrastinating on some personal goal such as weight loss or completing a homework assignment.

The people of Ammonihah were sufficiently depraved that the government conducted a mass immolation of a religious group which included women and children. Following this, the Lamanites (entirely unaware of the immolation) attacked Ammonihah and destroyed it.

LDS.org is featuring an inspiring video message from Elder Ucbtdorf, likening the great migrations of earths species to the human yearning for heaven.

My husband came in towards the end, as I was wiping tears from my eyes. Now, my husband is a lovely and faithful individual who likes to see the world through the eyes of those who might disagree. In this case, he commented that this message would bother him if he were an atheist. His hypothetical atheist would comment that the migrations of great species must be based on a genetic code that has been selected because of some survival factor. Thus a yearning for heaven could be seen as simply a random bit of genetic code.

To this, I responded, “What <synonym for narcissistic pedant> would assume that their modern conjecture invalidates the value of such a yearning for the good of humanity? If this yearning is common to so many, why trivialize it?”

To this the husband nodded and said, “Good point.”

I am also pleased to see that it is becoming easier to share and embed Church videos. As a blogger, I have not liked that it has been hard to do this in the past. So aside from giving you a slice of morning banter at the Stout home, I wanted to celebrate the new way Church videos are being made more shareable.