Growing up LDS in the mid-seventies and eighties, I don’t remember hearing much about grace at church. One of my first memories of learning about grace was when, as a sophomore in high school, I attended a Baptist service with a friend. The band (a band!), complete with bass guitar and drums, sang of grace like the rockstar doctrine it is. At the time, the spiritual concept of grace sounded about as foreign to me as the “ch-chch-ch, chch-ch, chch-ch — ting” of sticks against cymbals in church. It stands to reason that, for a time, the Church neglected grace. The concept of unconditional love and forgiveness seemed almost too…

I’ve had a busy week. Household chores were taxing and unrelenting. Juggling our families’ schedules for upcoming Christmas visits seemed as complex as prepping for the Olympics. Mountains of recycling needed to be schlepped over to the center — cardboard, paper, glass, plastic, metal — heavy, unwieldy and smelly. The mail offered bills and stacks of catalogs we didn’t need from mostly unlikely sources (Cigar connoisseur? Horse & Saddle?) What probably bugged me the most was the sudden dysfunction of my car’s Sirius XM radio. How could I keep up with our chaotic government without the news informing me mile after out-of-signal mile? Despite my frequent efforts to tune the…