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Sabbath Devotional :: An Eye of Faith
For several decades the orchestra conductor Benjamin Zander has taught music to young people in various youth conservatories. On the first day of class he makes a promise and a request to his students: “Your grade for the year is an A with this condition: write me a letter in the first two weeks of the course, dated at the end of the year saying “Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because _____,” outlining what you will be doing by then. Then fall in love with and believe that person.” He asks the students to behave as though they already have an A and trust the process from there. Zander…
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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 :: Infinite Loop of Agape
“An infinite loop (sometimes called an endless loop) is a piece of coding that lacks a functional exit so that it repeats indefinitely.” I have a faint recollection of the concept of an infinite loop from an undergraduate computer coding class I took over 20 years ago. When a young man in my ward used the phrase in a gospel context during his missionary farewell recently, I felt a jolt of recognition as it related to some of my personal spiritual experiences over the past few years. It was a way to describe a state of being that I felt gloriously “stuck” in. It began with love, then became marked…
