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Sabbath Devotional :: So Great a Cloud of Witnesses
Every Sunday for many years, I’ve stood and said with my peers, or with girls I was teaching, “We will stand as witnesses of God . . . .” Until recently, I always interpreted that to mean that I should offer, in word or deed, some testimony about God. There is, of course, some grammatical ambiguity about of in English. It can mean about/related to, or it can mean from, or it can mark a possessive, as in a child of God — God’s child. Lately I have started to wonder if I might read “witnesses of God” to mean something more like “God’s witnesses.” What sort of witness would that be? One…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Steps Toward Unreasonable Discipleship
Have you read this book? My guess is that if we took a poll of the current US population, we’d find that not a lot of people alive now have. Originally published in 1896, it remains one of the best-selling books of all time, with more than 50 million copies sold, most here in the United States. To put that into perspective, when it was first published, the nation’s population was about 74 million people. In short, this book achieved an incredibly high level of cultural saturation, and if you were walking around America in the first part of the 20th century, you likely knew about it, you were familiar…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Thoughts on Sacrifice and Consecration
As my son prepares to leave on a mission soon, I find myself thinking a lot about sacrifice. After my own mission, I taught at the MTC for a couple of years. In one of my districts was an elder who was an outstanding college-level athlete. Considering his goal to be a professional athlete was actually achievable, sacrificing two years in the prime of his life was a very big deal. He got a lot of attention at the MTC, there was an article about him in the New Era, and after his mission, he spoke at firesides about his choice and experiences. He was a big deal. And he…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Moved With Compassion
I have been working my way through Jeffrey R. Holland’s book “Our Day Star Rising,” and a few weeks ago, I came across his commentary on Matthew 9:36-38: But when [Christ] saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto the disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest. Like many of you, I have always read these verses as applicable to missionary work and missionaries in the traditional sense. But I loved how…
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Sabbath Devotional :: A Bittersweet Year
“Life cannot be won. It can only be loved.” – Adam Miller, “Original Grace” I love new beginnings. I mark them at every interval I can — a new month, a new week, even a new day. A new year feels like the ultimate new beginning, and I am full of optimism and joy as I anticipate it. This carries over into January as I spend time evaluating my habits and routines, identifying which ones served me well in the past and which ones to jettison. I don’t make resolutions or set big goals – instead, I look for the little changes and adjustments I can make to improve my life. This…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Dawn
It’s a new year, a time of new beginnings. I enjoy setting goals and creating plans for accomplishing them. I feel pretty ambitious at this time of year and can sometimes overwhelm myself with my idealistic goals. As I have gotten older, I have learned to temper my goal setting to suit the reality of being me. No matter how ambitious or simple my New Year resolutions, I am guided by a reassuring hope that positive things are just around the corner. It is a new dawn, a new day, and I am drawn to the promise of light. The “Spirit giveth light to every [person] that cometh into the…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Christmas Day
I have always loved Christmas. The lights. The nativities. The trees. The prettily wrapped packages. Reminders to be a little more giving, a little more charitable. It is also a time of great nostalgia for me. Memories of sleeping in a room with all my siblings eagerly awaiting Santa. Acting out and reading the Nativity scene. And simply lots of time spent with family. Joy. Laughter. Reflections. It has always been such a wonderful time of year for me. But last year as I went to put up the Christmas decorations, my heart was unusually heavy. Singing “Joy to the World!” didn’t match my mood. Instead, these words felt more…
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Sabbath Devotional :: A Christmas Parable
Shortly after we moved to Boston, I learned the story behind the Christmas tree on the city’s Common. Every year it is given by the people of Nova Scotia as an expression of gratitude for Massachusetts’ response to a devastating disaster. A few weeks before Christmas in 1917, a munitions ship exploded in the Halifax harbor, setting the city ablaze. Thousands were killed and thousands more were wounded. Almost immediately the Governor of Massachusetts reached out with a telegram offering assistance: “Massachusetts stands ready to go to the limit in rendering every assistance you may be in need of.” That telegram went unanswered — the telegraph system had been destroyed.…
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Sabbath Devotional :: We Bow Our Knees, and Hope Our Hearts Follow
O my deare hert, young Jesu sweit, Prepare thy creddil in my spreit, And I sall rock thee to my hert, And never mair from thee depart. But I sall praise thee evermoir With sanges sweit unto thy gloir; The knees of my hert sall I bow, And sing that richt Balulalo. This text, which I know from Benjamin Britten’s setting in the Ceremony of Carols has always amused me a little. A cradle in the spirit? The knees of my heart?? This afternoon, I went to my nephew’s baptism. The font had filled more slowly than expected, so the water was shallow. Before the service began, my brother coached his son…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Enduring Love
I love Christmas time. For me, part of the joy of Christmas lies in long-standing family and community traditions. I grew up in Utah and always associated Christmas with all things winter: snowy landscapes, hot chocolate, more formal family dinners with heavier foods, carolers clothed in scarfs and mittens singing about a winter wonderland, and dark evenings for viewing Christmas lights. When I was on my mission, I approached the idea of Christmas in the hot Australian summer with some apprehension. Traditions in Australia vary from family to family, of course. But it was common to think of Christmas on the beach or at a backyard barbeque. Some gatherings were…
