Mormon Musings

For with God nothing shall be impossible. Luke 1:37

"We need to ponder in the scriptures and in the words of living prophets. We need to make plans which are not only wishes but covenants. And then we need to keep our promises to the Lord. And we need to lift others by sharing with them the blessings of the Atonement which have come in our lives." —Henry B. Eyring, " Help Them on Their Way Home ",  Liahona and Ensign , May 2010

"Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead. Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven. But for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come." —Jeffrey R. Holland, " An High Priest of Good Things to Come ",  Liahona and Ensign , November 1999

Astronomers tell us that our solar system is located in a spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, a flat disc-shaped cluster of stars approximately 100,000 light years across at its widest point.  A light year is the distance light travels in one year.  Moving at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, a beam of light traverses 5.7 trillion miles in 365 days.  The size of our galaxy, then, in miles, is a staggering 5.7 trillion multiplied by 100,000.  Our galaxy is estimated to contain at least 200 billion stars, half of which likely possess solar systems similar to our own.  The next closest galaxy is Andromeda, a star system much like our own Milky Way, approximately 2.2 million light years away from us.  Furthermore, our best telescopes can probe outward into space to a distance of over 10 billion light years and view over 50 billion galaxies, each of which possesses billions of stars.  And these galaxies are the only ones we can detect with the present state of our technology [there a

 “Our Father in Heaven is not an umpire who is trying to count us out. He is not a competitor who is trying to outsmart us. He is not a prosecutor who is trying to convict us. He is a loving Father who wants our happiness and eternal progress, and who will help us all He can if we will but give Him in our lives an opportunity to do so.” Richard L. Evans, quoted by N. Eldon Tanner in April 1971 General Conference http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1971/04/choose-you-this-day?lang=eng

When men, women, and children are honest with God and pay their tithes and offerings, the Lord gives them wisdom whereby they can do as much or more with the remainder than they could if they had not been honest with the Lord. Many times they are blessed and prospered in various ways—spiritually, physically, and mentally, as well as materially. Franklin D. Richards, April 1971 General Conference http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1971/04/the-law-of-abundance?lang=eng

In plain, blunt words, then, we are told that whatever nations occupy this land must serve God or die! The great men of modern America have given us similar warnings, peculiarly enough. A generation ago, Roger Babson, at that time one of our leading economists, said: “Only religion can prevent democratic rule from developing into mob rule. A nation can prosper only as its citizens are religious, intelligent, capable of service and eager to render it.” And then this great man said, and it is something to which we should give careful attention, “Every great panic we have ever had has been foreshadowed by a general decline in observance of religious principles.” Abraham Lincoln told the people of his day that America “need fear no danger from without. … If danger were ever to threaten the United States, it will come from within. ‘As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. …’” Then the great emancipator added this: “We have grown in numbers, wealt