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Sabbath Devotional :: Gratitude
I live in a rural area in the American West. Last spring, our stake president talked about the severe drought conditions. He said the stake presidency and high council had discussed whether to call for a stake-wide fast to pray for rain. He wondered if it was selfish to ask others to pray for rain. He is a farmer, so would it be like asking everyone to pray that his business was successful? But then he remembered that people like to eat. He made me laugh. We all depend on farmers to eat. I am happy to want anyone working in agriculture to be tremendously successful. As they prayed and…
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The Power of Real Humility
Humility is not the absence of confidence or the act of putting yourself or others down. Humility is recognizing from where you get your strength. Whether you think that you can do everything on your own or that you can do nothing at all — that is pride. Humility is being confident because of the Lord. I wrote that summation on my mission. Humility, when properly understood, is such a beautiful, inspiring, and power-giving principle. And yet, sadly, it’s a topic that has been so distorted within both our Christian and American cultures. Two stories illustrate this misconstruction for me. Story one: I was in Primary when a boy said…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Advocate
As I stood to exit a meeting at the school, the teacher said, “Your daughter is lucky to have you as her advocate.” Advocate. The word caught my attention. In that situation, I was teaming up with teachers and administrators whose purpose was to help my daughter be successful. Her success was a shared goal. But without my advocacy, they wouldn’t have known how to help. As I drove home, I dwelt on the word advocate. One of Christ’s titles is Advocate. This title makes me feel especially loved by him. In the Doctrine and Covenants, Christ says, “Lift up your hearts and be glad, for I am in your midst,…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Belonging and Believing
Something I catch myself thinking a lot is, “How can anyone believe _____??!!” And especially, “How can any of my family, my friends believe ______??!!” I see the inverse on social media sometimes: “If you believe ___, unfriend/unfollow me because I don’t want to know you.” It is so satisfying and so tempting to think there is a set of righteous beliefs and we should only associate with others who have them. Unfortunately, I do not believe Christians or Latter-day Saints can afford to indulge in this kind of ideological purity testing for the people to whom we are willing to extend love. It’s true that there are abhorrent beliefs,…
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Sabbath Devotional :: And Above All Things, Charity
True confession: I don’t love reading the scriptures. Well, I don’t love reading them all the time. I don’t read them all the time. I know I should, but I don’t. I have struggled my entire life being a daily scripture reader. I have always had dreams of being a great scriptorian (and an Olympic gymnast), but I am not. I struggle to establish any good, daily habit (unless you count snacking on chocolate chips, because I do that every day). When it comes to the scriptures, I struggle to understand what I am reading, especially when it’s written in King James-era English. I struggle when I see what I…
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Sabbath Devotional :: “More Love”
There is a lot of talk lately about polarization and tribalism. The danger of fracture and schism feels immediate and frightening. Yeats’ oft-cited lines ricochet in my head almost daily. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” But it turns out that Yeats’ poem, published in 1920, was voicing a timeless sentiment. Another of my favorite poems, John Donne’s Anatomy of the World voiced a similar lament in 1619: And new philosophy calls all in doubt,The element of fire is quite put out,The sun is lost, and th’earth, and no man’s witCan well direct him where to look for it.And freely men confess that this world’s spent,When in the planets…
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Sabbath Devotional :: “Don’t let Perfect be the Enemy of Good” and Unwritten Stories
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” It’s not exactly what Voltaire said, but it is how it’s known in common parlance. What don’t we do because we think we need to do it perfectly? What don’t we do because we think it won’t be enough, won’t matter, won’t make a big enough difference, won’t be important enough? What don’t we do because we think somebody else could do it better? What don’t we do because somebody may criticize us, or shake their heads, or rebuke us? What good things aren’t we doing? I fight this fight more often than I’d like to admit. I’m not satisfied unless I…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Love Your Neighbor
Like so many of us I have an interest in family history. I have spent many years trying to learn more about my family. I am not done. I once knew a woman who was done with family history. She lived in an early 1800’s farm house. She created a history for her home. She made copies of the old deeds that were stored in the county records. She read old newspapers at the library. She found birth and death announcements for prior occupants of the house. She collected building plans submitted for additions and alterations. She also found write ups of local sports achievements and garden parties. She created…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Faith to Move Mountains
In President Nelson’s last conference talk, he said: “My dear brothers and sisters, my call to you this Easter morning is to start today to increase your faith. Through your faith, Jesus Christ will increase your ability to move the mountains in your life, even though your personal challenges may loom as large as Mount Everest. “Your mountains may be loneliness, doubt, illness, or other personal problems. Your mountains will vary, and yet the answer to each of your challenges is to increase your faith. That takes work. Lazy learners and lax disciples will always struggle to muster even a particle of faith. “To do anything well requires effort. Becoming…
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Sabbath Devotional :: A National Sabbath
This year it feels like a tender mercy that the Fourth of July falls on the sabbath. Given our recent national struggles, a self-congratulatory and raucous celebration might not hit the right note. But perhaps a sabbath is exactly what we need right now – the chance to rest from our labors, reflect on where we have gone wrong, and recommit to creating a better future where we live more harmoniously with our fellow citizens. Today, instead of centering our celebration on parades and fireworks, we could use the stillness of a Sunday to sit with the powerful and holy truths that motivated the first Americans as they created a…
