Mormon Musings

With all your differences in personal circumstances and past experiences, I can tell you something of what lies ahead for you. As you keep the faith, you will find yourself invited by the Lord often to serve someone in need when it will not seem convenient. It may appear to be an unpleasant and perhaps even impossible task. When the call comes, it may seem you are not needed or that someone else could easily give the succor. Remember that when the Lord lets us encounter someone in distress, we honor the good Samaritan for what he did not do as much as for what he did. He did not pass by on the other side even though the beaten traveler on the road was a stranger and perhaps an enemy. He did what he could for the beaten man and then put in place a specific plan for others to do more. He did that because he understood that helping may require more than what one person can do. Lessons in that story can guide you in whatever your future holds. President Henry B. Eyring, October 201

The Holy Ghost . . . quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies all the natural passions and affections, and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use. It inspires, develops, cultivates, and matures all the fine-toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings, and affections of our nature Parley P. Pratt ( Key to the Science of Theology  [1978], 61).

"I promise you that daily family prayer and scripture study will build within the walls of your home a security and bonding that will enrich your lives and prepare your families to meet the challenges of today and the eternities to come."  (Elder Perry, Ensign, May 1993, 92)

"We have implanted in our souls a desire to be free. The Lord understood this when He granted us our mortal probation. With that freedom, however, comes accountability. We are instructed not to idle away our time nor bury our talents and not use them. We are expected to make our lives better through our own initiatives and efforts." —L. Tom Perry, "Youth of the Noble Birthright", Ensign, November 1998

"What is the object of our coming into existence, then dying and falling away, to be here no more? It is but reasonable to suppose that God would reveal something in reference to the matter, and it is a subject we ought to study more than any other. We ought to study it day and night, for the world is ignorant in reference to their true condition and relation [to God].” Joseph Smith

It is customary, even understandable, when we read of God's indignation and anger to think of it in terms of an angry mortal father and not ponder it much more.  Some even mutter about Old Testament "tribalism," mistakenly thinking of God as being personally piqued or offended at some act of wickedness or stupidity because He has told us to behave otherwise.  This is erroneous, bumper-sticker theology.   Simply because we are, so often, angry at a wrong done to us, we [wrongly] assume the same about God's anger.   Neal A. Maxwell, "Sermons Not Spoken," p. 83  

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