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Sabbath Devotional :: “For I was an hungered . . .”
A couple of years ago when I was living in downtown Portland, I committed myself to a strict monthly grocery budget. On October 31st, I walked to the nearby grocery store to happily spend my remaining few dollars on chocolate chips for some Halloween cookies. As I was leaving the store, I was approached by a woman who asked me if I could give her some money so she could buy some Oreos and soda for her kids for Halloween. Being completely honest (and somewhat single-minded), I blurted out that I had just spent the last of my monthly grocery budget, and she kindly thanked me anyway. As I walked…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Thoughts on My Vision
I woke up one morning this past June with what seemed to be a smudge of Vaseline on my right eye. When I looked straight ahead the center of everything was blurry. As the day wore on, my vision in that eye stayed wonky. I tracked down an ophthalmologist who did a variety of tests with expensive machinery that could take images of the inside of my eyeball. Apparently some small blood vessels in the back of my eye had burst. “Vascular occlusion” was the term the doctor used. Untreated, it could get worse, eventually leading to possible blindness. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s a treatment. A series of shots…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Oh Say, What is Truth?
“Oh Say, What is Truth” is a buoyant and richly poetic LDS hymn*, but in my lifetime, it’s been sung only rarely in our meetings. I’m hoping that will change. Because that. hymn’s. time. has. come! In a post-truth, alternative-fact, fake news, free-press-as-enemy epoch, truth or objective reality is under siege, and with that, the bulwarks of democracy in our nation and across the world are eroding. As never before, we must search for and speak in truth. It was in recognition of this newly-sprung truth-crisis that Senator Jeff Flake** quoted some of this LDS hymn’s verses on the senate floor. And that was about the same time I noticed…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Giver of Good Gifts
One of my most treasured memories from childhood is looking for cocoons and chrysalides with my dad. Every year in the late summer, my family would drive into the west fields of Springville, Utah (or beyond) scouting milk weed plants for caterpillars or already formed chrysalides that we could take home and observe until they became butterflies. Many a mason jar sat on our kitchen counter for days and even weeks at a time with a small chrysalis dangling from a twig or leaf under many tiny, watchful eyes. To watch the butterflies finally emerge was magical — truly incomparable — an experience I was eager to recreate for my…
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Sabbath Devotional :: No Other Power
Many years ago, when our children were young, we had a situation arise in the Glenn household. Our 7-year-old son announced that his tithing money was missing. After some investigation, it became clear that someone had taken the money. This was the first real instance of theft in our home and I was devastated. I sat all five kids down and explained the seriousness of this offense. “This is stealing,” I said, with what I hoped was appropriate gravity. “And in this case, it’s not just stealing from your brother, it’s stealing from Heavenly Father.” Everyone vehemently denied culpability, and so I sent them off to school. At about 10:00…
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Sabbath Devotional :: A Testimony of Fasting
I just gained a testimony of fasting. But it happened backwards. My mom always told me about how fasting made her feel a sort of mental and spiritual clarity, that it amplified her ability to tackle important ideas and challenges. To me it always seemed like going hungry, book-ended with prayer, and accompanied by a donation slip. Except for those first Sundays when I remembered not to eat, but forgot to pray. Then it was just going hungry. And sometimes, having forgotten to pray, I would throw my hands up, declare a “failed fast,” and write my check for fast offerings, resolving to do better next time. I’m a foodie.…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Thistling
My husband and I have a routine in July. At 5:30 pm we deck ourselves out in rugged clothing from hats to thick gloves to boots. We climb into our UTV (Utility Terrain Vehicle), arm ourselves with sturdy, sharp little clippers and drive on our acreage (which includes a lot of wilderness land) until we find a batch of thistles. In sunlight, thistles can look dazzlingly beautiful — like a hundred proud purple heads surveying their domain. In Scotland the thistle is the national flower. In some areas thistles are used for teas and some say dried out thistle heads can be used for horse fodder. For New Age mystics,…
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Sabbath Devotional :: A Delightful Sabbath
In Exodus 20:8-11, Moses gives the sabbath day commandment to the children of Israel: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day; and hallowed it.” In Ezekiel…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Charity: More Than Simply a Good Idea
Saturday — yesterday — was the funeral of a good friend. Her words go with the Sabbath devotion I prepared and I want to dedicate this devotional to her. I also want to thank the many women of MWEG for your remarkable examples of using love and peace to affect powerful change. From Berta: “Please remember those who are the unwashed, the Samaritan, the other. If you can please mourn with us, for we are mourning. Please remember us in your Sunday worship. Remember the leper who would worship beside you in the pews but is now consigned to a distant colony. Please do not cross the street or avert…
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Sabbath Devotional :: An Anniversary
Yesterday, June 16th, was the anniversary of my baptism. I remember being the nervous young college student who (after two years of being a “dry Mormon”) had finally persuaded my parents that what they feared was an “adolescent whim” was in fact a stable commitment to follow the path I sensed God calling me to. We gathered at the mission home in Mt Prospect, Illinois, and I was baptized in their small kidney shaped backyard pool. I remember clutching the poor missionary’s arm so tightly it probably left marks. I remember being nervous while changing into dry clothing, hoping I’d done the right thing — or at least a right…
