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…

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…

I have always loved anchors — the symbolism and the idea of being anchored to something. Of having something that will keep us secure despite all the winds and tempests. But lately, the word “unmoored” has been echoing in my head more and more. Unmoored means “not or no longer attached to the mooring.” A mooring is the chains or other material that keeps a boat securely fastened to the dock. (And that’s the extent of my very rudimentary shipping knowledge.) But in many ways, “unmoored” is a perfect word for the feeling I, too, often feel creeping in. And I see it reflected in those around me. We know…

My Testimony is simple: My Heavenly Father thinks the world of me, and My Savior has given me access to the greatest power this world has ever known: His atonement. Because of this, My family will be ok, My scholars will be ok, My community will be ok, All of my people will be ok in the eternal run, because he thinks just as highly of each of them, as he does me . . . And the same mercy he extends to me, on my worst behavior . . . The same strength he gives me, when I’m at my most disempowered . . . The same comfort he…

“Life, & the world, or whatever we call that which we are & feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being . . . . Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the function of that which is its object.” This passage, which opens an essay by the English Romantic poet Percy Shelley, has been a touchstone for me since I first heard it in college.…

This week’s devotional is musical. In a version of my life where I was a little more talented and a lot braver, I would have studied choral conducting in college (formally, instead of just by spending more time in choir rehearsals than in class!). I might have made it my life’s work to champion the underrated choral works of Felix Mendelssohn—more interesting than Handel, more accessible for most choirs than Brahms. This week I’ve had his motet ‘Verleih Uns Frieden’ running through my head. It’s a fairly simple piece—your ward choir could learn it in 5 or 6 solid rehearsals—and the text is an interesting German variant of Dona Nobis…