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Sabbath Devotional :: Zion
I have a confession to make. I haven’t always been a fan of the notion of Zion. When I was younger, I thought Zion meant that we all had to be the same. You know, same heart, same mind. And I couldn’t bear the thought of all that sameness. I was, of course, mistaken. We don’t have to look beyond the natural world to recognize how much God values — delights in, even — diversity. As the Jesuit priest and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Great, Spacious, Empty and Airborne
Recently, on an early spring evening, I found myself in the back of a van, craning my neck toward the dusty window to catch a final glimpse of a sprawling, hilly, mottled landscape. As the van spluttered and climbed the winding dirt road out of Cox’s Bazaar, the largest refugee camp in the world sheltering well over one million Rohingya, I glimpsed what our Bangladeshi humanitarian aid worker friends called the Tree of Hope. It stood alone on a knoll, a boney silhouette stretching its knobby arms over this hopeless panorama, this landscape of utter despair. REPURPOSING LEHI’S DREAM Lehi’s dream with its Tree of Life hovered close. (If you…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Just Because I Love You
Sheri Dew has said that there are two questions that we can ask that will help open the heavens: “First, ask the Lord to teach you what it feels and sounds like for you when He is speaking to you via the Holy Ghost, and then watch how He tutors you. And, second, if you’ve never asked the Lord how He feels about you, that is a great question to ask” (Sheri Dew, “Will You Engage in the Wrestle,” May 17, 2016). The first question is one that I began asking many years ago after hearing Sister Dew speak about personal revelation. I began diligently asking the Lord to specifically…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Grace
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…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Creation, Destruction, and Redemption
I was still reeling and in deep despair over the loss of a dear friend who had just been killed in a tragic car accident when I saw the news that Notre-Dame Cathedral was burning. The thought of more than 850 years of history, all of the meticulous efforts of thousands of unnamed builders and artisans, not to mention the 300+ years it took to grow the trees used as lumber for the original construction, all going up in flames sort of broke something in me. For a few weeks now, I have felt absolutely undone over the fundamental unfairness that it is so terribly, exhaustingly difficult to create and…
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Sabbath Devotional :: The Parable of the Goatheads
A few weeks ago was bike week at my kids’ school. Since it’s about a half hour bike ride from our house, I didn’t quite trust my boys to make it there on their own. So I loaded my little girl into the bike trailer, and away we all went. About one block from the school, I was forced off the street onto the sidewalk. I heard a smattering of little crunching sounds, and saw the culprits scattered across the sidewalk: goatheads. (For the unfamiliar – count your blessings – they are nasty little things, the seeds of a pervasive weed with three sharp thorns that hurt like the dickens…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Easter Musings on the Sixth Principle of Peacemaking
MWEG’s Sixth Principle of Peacemaking: We believe that, through Christ who overcame all, we can have the hope of peace in this life, regardless of our circumstances, and the promise of everlasting peace when Christ comes again to reign forever as the Prince of Peace. In John 16:33, the Gospel writer starkly juxtaposes the realities of mortal life: These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. The scripture sets up a drastic contrast. “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” This is a given. We see it…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Building a Zion Community
These are my four great-grandmothers — Gladys, Grace, Lucy, and Marie. I had the rare privilege of knowing all of them in this life. Their personalities were all very different from one another, but each was so strong and interesting in her own way. Recently, while working on some family history, I came across several photographs of these women at various family and community functions; a few even captured multiple grandmothers in the same photographs. Maybe for the first time, I began to give serious thought to how these women might have interacted with one another as peers in the community, long before I came along. I remembered that a…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Come, Ye Disconsolate
Today I was at the funeral for my 17-year-old nephew, Zachary. Zachary had muscular dystrophy, which is a genetic disease that runs in my family. My younger brother had the same disease and passed away five years ago. I have another nephew, still living, who also has this disease. My brother and my nephews have faced enormous challenges and difficulties in life that are very visible. I have become acutely aware that most of us face enormous challenges and difficulties that are not so visible, but no less significant. At the funeral today, my niece sang a beautiful arrangement of a hymn that I was unfamiliar with. The words can…
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Sabbath Devotional :: Discernment
My third child has an artist’s soul. Her world is full of color, music, and words. She lives to create; it is her passion. Her fingers and mind are in constant motion. This consuming need to create also has led to a great deal of frustration when projects fail to meet her high standards and vision. I can only imagine her levels of stress as a young girl, working on her masterpieces with inexperienced fingers, unable to perform as she desired. Tears, many tears, were a constant in our home as she struggled, learning to be patient. One evening as I was fixing dinner, she came to me with her…
