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Sabbath Devotional :: Opening Doors and Hearts Through Curiosity and Compassion
I value maintaining curiosity and compassion for people with a wide spectrum of viewpoints. The gift of curiosity to understand more deeply starts with a desire to understand. The Book of Mormon prophet Alma taught, “if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, . . . even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you” (Alma 32:27). Proverbs encourages curiosity: “incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding;” (Proverbs 2:2). I desire to incline my ear and apply my heart to understanding by listening to diverse perspectives, especially among those within the Christian world and the Church of Jesus Christ…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Repairing the Breach
“. . . and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.” (Isaiah 58:12) The word “breach” means a hole or gap in a fortress, usually caused by an attacking army. The stakes of Zion are “for a defense, and for a refuge from the storm” (D&C 115:6). In other words, Zion is a fortress. Our wards and stakes should be refuges and defenses against that which would destroy. Unfortunately, as we know too well, breaches have damaged our fortresses. We have breaches in our personal and community relationships — some are newly created, and some existing holes have been recently enlarged. My…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Hope Against Hope
“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” ~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If anybody had reason to lose hope, it would have been Rev. King. In many ways, his life was full of disappointment, and he never got to see the fruits of his lifelong labors. Rev. King also experienced several bouts of severe depression — experiences that he kept closely guarded due to stigmas and fears his mental health struggles would be used against him. Hiding his struggles must have been lonely and heavy to carry. He often reflected that his work left him feeling like he was “giving, giving, giving” and…
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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 :: 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…
