"And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt... talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up... And thou shalt write them on the posts of thy house, and on thy gates." Deuteronomy 6:6-9
And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people. ...neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.
4 Nephi 1:15, 17
I'm always interested in seeing how religious themes are represented in art, especially in art that isn't explicitly spiritual. Yesterday, I went on a road trip to Joshua Tree National Park, and my traveling companion and I decided that the perfect soundtrack to our trip was U2's album The Joshua Tree.
Yucca brevifolia in Joshua Tree National Park
The album starts out with "Where the Streets Have No Name". When I got home, I was curious what the song was about, so I looked it up. It's apparently a reference to the social divide in Belfast that was prevalent at the time. Upon meeting someone new, people would ask what street they lived on. The city was so segregated that, just by finding out what street someone lived on, you could tell immediately someone's religion and socioeconomic status. Bono envisioned a better world - one where those divisions didn't exist, i.e. where the streets have no name. Basically, it's a song about Zion - a place of unity where the pure in heart dwell.
Where the Streets Have No Name - U2 - 1987 - The Joshua Tree
That got me thinking about what our "streets" are these days. What divides us as a church and a society?
In the LDS context today, a few things come to mind. People are divided by whether or not they served a mission (and if they served, whether they served in the US or outside the US), whether or not they're married, how many kids they have, whether or not their kids have checked off societally prescribed boxes, whether a woman is employed, etc.
Let's work to create a society where our "streets" have no name.
And, just as a bonus, here's a picture from the trip I took to Belfast back in January.
Peace walls were erected throughout Belfast during The Troubles to separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. The violence has stopped, but the streets still have names.
First off, my deepest apologies for dropping off the face of the planet for a year. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say, 2016 was a pretty terrible year for me, and I was so busy keeping myself afloat that there wasn't really time for blogging. I'm back on my feet, so here I am.
Without further ado...
I love music. I've always said that I have three dream callings in the church - gospel doctrine teacher, seminary teacher, and ward music chair. A little over a year ago, I got called as ward music chair, so only two more dream callings to go. :-)
I used to collect hymnals. (I've lost most of them over the years, sadly.) There are so many really wonderful hymns that aren't in our LDS hymnal. For a while on Facebook, I had a Sunday feature where I would highlight some of them for my friends so they could see what's out there. I haven't done it in a few years. However, I still have a love of hymns.
Here are a few of my favorites that aren't in our hymnal.
1. Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
This is probably my very favorite hymn of all time. The music is beautiful, and the words are comforting and uplifting. It's a well-known hymn tune called Hyfrydol. You'll probably recognize it as the tune that "In Humility, Our Savior" is set to.
2. When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
I was first introduced to this hymn in the MTC when I joined the choir and we sang it for some occasion or other. (Fireside? Sacrament meeting? I don't remember.) It resonated with me instantly. The sacrament hymn selection in our hymnal is kind of small, and this would be a lovely addition.
3. Shall We Gather at the River?
I first heard this hymn when I was rehearsing for a choir tour the summer between high school and college. In addition to the music we were traveling to debut, we practiced this one so that we could use it at another occasion on the trip. The other occasion fell through, so we never got to perform the song, but it stuck with me anyway. I love the hope that the song conveys. "Soon we'll reach the shining river. Soon our pilgrimage will cease."
4. Holy, Holy, Holy
This one will probably never make it into a LDS hymnal because of the line "blessed Trinity" (even though the Book of Mormon is explicitly Trinitarian, though that's a subject for another day), but I love it because it brings out the wonder and majesty of God so beautifully. For what it's worth, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed a version that used the words "blessed Deity" instead.
5. I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say
You'll recognize this as the tune to "If You Could Hie to Kolob" (or if you're into Irish folk music and speed the song up to about double speed, "Star of the County Down"). I love the music, and this one has lyrics that are a little more traditionally Christian.
Honorable Mention: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
No mention of hymns not in the current LDS hymnal would be complete without this one. It's lovely and grace-filled. I hope it gets put back in the next version of the hymnal.
My new calling at church has me sitting on the stand a few times per month, so I get to observe things from a different vantage point. Last Sunday, a few minutes before sacrament meeting started, a woman brought a baggie with a piece of corn tortilla up to the priests at the sacrament table. She said that she was gluten free and needed an alternative way to take the sacrament. One of the priests placed the tortilla in a paper cup so that it wouldn't be contaminated by the bread and then put it on a sacrament tray.
I found this whole exchange very moving. It was beautiful to see an accommodation made so that a fellow saint can participate in worshiping with us without doing herself harm. The tortilla wasn't labeled as inferior, different, or non-ideal. When the priest blessed the bread, the tortilla was blessed right along with it. Both the bread and the tortilla became equally representative of the body of Christ.
This got me thinking about spiritual gluten. What things are we doing at church that nourish the majority but harm a few? So often, I hear people say things like "we can't worry about people who don't fit the mold because we have to teach 'the ideal'." That's the spiritual equivalent of telling someone with celiac disease to eat the bread and be happy about it because it's good for 98% of the population. To do this is to spiritually poison some of our fellow saints.
Sometimes we'll do lip service to different circumstances, but it often comes off as condescending and exclusionary. I'm reminded of how Mother's Day is often handled at church. Women without children are patted on the head and told that we matter, but it's immediately followed up with language like "motherhood is the most important thing you can do with your life." (Subtext: "so what you're doing isn't.") Our spiritual corn tortilla apparently isn't good enough. It's not just those without children who are subjected to language like this. Single adults, parents with children who do not practice the faith, people married to non-members, mothers who are employed, fathers who are stay at home parents, and many other people who won't be featured on the cover of the Ensign experience this to varying degrees.
How much better, how much more Zion-like, would our church be if, instead of merely tolerating differences, we blessed the spiritual corn tortillas our fellow saints brought to church? What would it be like if we truly believed that God's hand can be found in the lives of all His people, not just those whose lives look like the general authorities.
It would go something like this: "Brother and Sister Smith, your temple marriage is good and holy, and the ward is here to feed your soul. Sister Jones, your singleness is good and holy, and the ward is here to feed your soul. Brother Johnson, you are doing a wonderful job raising your children alone, and your single parenthood is good and holy. The ward is here to feed your soul. Sister Diaz, your marriage to a non-member is good and holy, and the ward is here to feed your soul."
Blessing and validating the lives of Sister Jones, Brother Johnson, and Sister Diaz does nothing to take away from the lives of Brother and Sister Smith. They are not harmed by the spiritual corn tortillas that others bring, but denigrating spiritual corn tortillas in the name of conformity - because wheat bread is good enough for most people - unnecessarily separates our fellow saints from fully partaking of the wonder that is the gospel.
For, behold, I say unto you, that it mattereth not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink when ye partake of the sacrament, if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory—remembering unto the Father my body which was laid down for you, and my blood which was shed for the remission of your sins.
Doctrine and Covenants 27:2
When we remember the body of Christ, it doesn't matter whether that body is represented by bread made from wheat or a tortilla made from corn as long as we have an eye single to God's glory when we eat. The church is often called the body of Christ. As long as we have an eye single to God's glory, the circumstances of our lives don't matter. Don't make our spiritually gluten free saints choose between eating something harmful or going away hungry. Our spiritual corn tortillas should be blessed alongside the bread.
Fifteen months ago, I moved to Phoenix from the San Francisco Bay Area. I didn't know anyone when I moved, and I didn't have a job. I had a few hundred dollars to my name. It was kind of scary, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
When I arrived, I settled in to my apartment and began to unpack. The first Sunday I was there was General Conference, so I didn't get a chance to go to my new ward yet.
The second Sunday, I checked the church website for the location and meeting time of my ward. I showed up at the appointed hour only to find out that I was 45 minutes late because my ward's meeting time had been changed and the site hadn't been updated yet.
The third Sunday, things started to settle in to the new normal.
I love science fiction. It’s rich in allegory and can teach
us many truths about life. In a way, I think that it can be our modern-day
parables. I recently finished watching the 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica
(hereafter abbreviated as BSG). It’s a television show filled with deep and
rich commentary on matters of spirituality, the human condition, forgiveness,
diversity, politics, life, death, and the mysterious workings of the divine. One
major religious refrain that is repeated throughout the show is “All of this
has happened before, and all of this will happen again.”
Today I’m going to talk about what BSG teaches us about the
nature of faith and prophecy. In order to make this post comprehensible to
someone who hasn’t seen the show, I’m going to be giving a great deal of
background and detail. There will be spoilers in this post, but I’ve contained
them all to after the jump.
At baptism, we covenant to “mourn with those who mourn”, not “make people who mourn go away so they don’t make us uncomfortable”.
Sadly, my friends were mourning this week, and some of our fellow saints refused to mourn with us.
It started out innocently enough, when someone carelessly implied that all Mormon women were married. After hearing the hurt this caused several single women, this person eventually apologized, but not before a huge dustup occurred where several of my friends were told by others (not the original person) that they were unwelcome because they were single. We were told that our pain at being excluded from our religious community was illegitimate and made-up, and that we should go and find a different place to be, so that they wouldn’t have to hear our pain.
This is not how we build Zion.
After Christ appeared to the surviving Nephites and Lamanites, they built Zion. The distinguishing characteristic of their society is that there were not “any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.” 4 Nephi 1:17 This doesn’t mean that everyone was suddenly the same. It means that despite their different backgrounds, they were united. The stratifications that exist in the world should not exist in Zion.
Our community has too many -ites.
How do we overcome our natural tendency to stratify? Chapter 1 of 4 Nephi describes a righteous and happy society. Verse 12 says that they met together often. Verse 15 says that there was love in the hearts of the people.
If we want a Zion society, we need to get out of our bubbles and listen to the lived experiences of those who are different. We can’t just dismiss them. The next time you’re at church, talk to someone who isn’t like you. And then listen.
Jesus said that all the law and the prophets hang on the commandment to love. This is the center of a Christian life. If we develop love in our hearts, we will develop a Zion society. Jesus also said that whatever we do to the least of society, we have done to Him. When we ostracize entire demographics, we are kicking Jesus out of Zion.
While the catalyst for this post was the exclusion and marginalization of the unmarried, those who aren’t married are not the only -ites. We have -ites of various racial or ethnic minorities, infertile-ites, and the list goes on and on. In Zion, there will still be people of various races and ethnicities, people of varying family compositions, and people from all walks of life. But let’s not turn them into “the other”. We should have no manner of -ites among us.
Sometimes I'll catch myself singing hymns without spending too much time actually thinking about the words. Today at church, we sang hymn 240, Know This, That Every Soul Is Free. As I got to verse 4, I noticed a phrase that struck me as a bit odd.
Our God is pleased when we improve
His grace and seek his perfect love.
What does it mean to improve the grace of God? I've always viewed God's grace as perfect.
I did a search in the scripture section of lds.org, where I typed the phrase "improve grace" into the search box. I didn't get any results.
The only thing I can think of is in the context of real estate. A piece of empty land is said to be "improved" when a structure is built on it. So maybe what the hymn means is that when we have God's grace in our life, we should do something with it.
That's all I've got. Any other thoughts on what it could mean?
But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it. . .and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Micah 4:1-3
During law school, I took a temporary job as the receptionist at a software company. I was very quickly promoted into a role in the HR department, and I continued to develop professionally until I was second only to the vice president. Around this time, the company was acquired by a defense contractor.
A singles' ward in a neighboring stake has small FHE groups for the ward members. Back in October, one of my friends invited me to come to her FHE group so that I could meet more people. I decided to come, and I made some new friends.
In April, the groups got changed up, so I started going to a new group, but I still kept in touch with people from the old group. Yesterday, I went back to the old group because the group leader for the new group is on vacation for the next few weeks, so FHE got canceled.
At the end of the meeting, the person giving the closing prayer asked if there was anything in particular that we would like for her to pray for. One guy said he needed help finding a job. I said that I needed help with my toe healing.
On Thursday, I was at the beach, and I stubbed my toe on a rock. On Friday, it was still hurting, so I went to the clinic, and the doctor told me it was broken. He taped my toe and gave me a walking boot and told me to wear it for 4-6 weeks.
During the closing prayer, the person giving the prayer prayed for my toe, and for my friend's job. I got a call from the radiologist this morning, and it turns out it was a false alarm. My toe isn't broken. It's just bruised. I should be good as new in about 2 weeks.
Now I just need to wait to hear that my friend found an awesome job.
I have so many things that I want to say, but I can't seem to get them into writing. I think part of it is that it's easier to dash off a quick comment in a Facebook group than it is to sit down and write out a thoughtful blog post.
The bar exam (which I took in February yet again, though in a different state this time) kind of wore me out. Plus, I can feel myself getting sick again. I did some more lab testing last week, and I'll find out soon whether my thyroid has gotten worse, or whether I've had an adrenal relapse. (Or whether my body has decided to break in new and interesting ways...) I'm just so tired all the time.
I'm going to a mid-singles' conference this weekend, and there's a pretty good speaker lineup. Elder Holland is the keynote, so I'm sure I'll have something to report. Instant blogging material!
In no particular order, here are the topics I'm considering blogging about once I can focus long enough to do so:
If there's one word that can nearly universally make a feminist's hair stand on edge, it's "patriarchy" or any word derived from it.
One important LDS ritual is the giving of what is called a "patriarchal blessing", which is a personal blessing of guidance given to each member who desires one. The blessing is given by someone who has been called and set apart to the priesthood office of "patriarch". The blessing is recorded and transcribed so that the member can refer to it throughout his/her life. It is modeled after the blessings that Jacob gave to his twelve sons, as recorded in the book of Genesis.
I received my blessing about 15 years ago, and it has been meaningful in my life. But it's distracting to have the patriarchy thrown in my face every time I read it. So I've embarked on a search for a new term to refer to the blessing.
When I broached the subject to a few people, one individual suggested that it was a futile pursuit because the priesthood itself is so bound up in patriarchy that it's impossible to separate the blessing from the baggage. I disagree. While I do have faith that someday the priesthood will be extended to every worthy member of the church, I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater until that day. So the fact that the person who gave me this blessing is male isn't the problem. The problem is the word "patriarchal" and everything that implies.
In my search for a new word, I checked the lesson manuals on lds.org to see what word was used in other languages to refer to the blessing. I looked at French, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, German, and Tagalog. All of them used a word that was derived from and similar to "patriarchal", so no luck there. I didn't look at the other languages listed because the characters weren't the same as in English, so I couldn't even guess at what was being said. I suppose at some point I could run them through Google translate, but given what I saw already, I doubt I would come up with anything different.
I considered using the term "priestly", but I decided that sounded too much like a standard priesthood blessing, and I wanted something that more clearly set it apart from the others. Then I remembered the song we've been singing in primary every week for several months. (Why must all the article of faith songs have such annoying tunes? I guess it worked because I remembered it...)
We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth. Article of Faith 6
Then I started to wonder who our evangelists are. I remembered in seminary being taught that an evangelist is another term for patriarch. (I'm sure it's bad linguistics, but if it's good theology, then I'm cool with it.) A quick check in the Bible Dictionary confirmed that this is an accepted LDS use of the term.
So, I have an accepted synonym that avoids the troubling connotations of the word "patriarch". Then I figured I could call it my "evangelical blessing". But I decided that "evangelical" has its own baggage. It has come to be solely associated with a specific form of Protestantism in the U.S. I then decided that "evangelistic" would work. I figured it wasn't a real word, but that hasn't stopped us before (I'm looking at you, "telestial"). I checked in the dictionary, and it turns out that "evangelistic" is a real word. It means "pertaining to evangelists".
So I am now thrilled to continue to read and study the wisdom that I can gain from my own personal "evangelistic blessing".
I often hear people in the church refer to those who marry in their 20's as "graduating" from the YSA program. Well, if that's the case, I just flunked out. I'm no longer a young single adult in the church. I'm now a single adult.
I kind of have mixed feelings about this, and honestly I didn't expect to be weirded out by it. For all the joking about flunking out of YSA, I honestly dropped out a few years ago. I've never been a part of a singles ward. (I'm opposed to the whole idea because it creates a division in the body of Christ. There isn't a separate church for single people, so the congregations should be integrated.) I stopped going to the activities a while back because the things that appealed to me when I was 19, going to college, and living with my parents weren't really relevant when I was in my mid to late 20's, working, and living on my own. Even the mid-singles activities don't really appeal to me. They tend to be the same as the YSA activities, only with a further skewed ratio of women to men. (At the YSA activities, I found it was about 2:1. In mid-singles, it's more like 4:1 or 5:1.)
It's hard being a single person in a married church. When the primary president announces to all of the teachers that there will be an inservice and to "please ask your husband to substitute teach your class so you can attend" or when the relief society president says "we have an assignment to perform proxy sealings at the temple next week and we need five couples to attend", it can feel like I'm invisible. Those same situations could have been handled like this: "Please find a substitute teacher so that you can attend next week's inservice." and "We need five men and five women to attend a temple trip next week." Just changing a few words can make a world of difference.
My life is great. I'm pretty happy, and I'm making progress in establishing myself in a rewarding career. I have friends, family, and a wonderful cat. But there's a part of me that feels I'm missing something. I want to share this awesome life with someone. I want someone to help share my joys and my burdens and I want to share his joys and burdens. But if that never happens, I think I'll be fine. (Even though church culture says that I shouldn't be fine. The constant battle continues...)
There's a relatively new primary song entitled If the Savior Stood Beside Me. The song starts out "If the Savior stood beside me, would I do the things I do?" The point of this song, I'm sure, is a thought experiment wherein if the answer to that question is no, then we shouldn't be doing it at all. I engaged in that thought experiment this morning while getting ready for work, and the answer to the question is, in nearly all cases, no. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing.
If the Savior stood beside me, I wouldn't clean my apartment. I wouldn't cook dinner. I wouldn't go to work or run errands. I wouldn't even read my scriptures. I would sit down, be quiet, and listen to what He has to say to me. The many worthy pursuits of my life would pause for something more important, but that doesn't mean that I should stop going to work, taking care of the necessities of life, or reading my scriptures. It means we should be mindful of the appropriate time and place for doing the various activities in life. After all, "to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." Ecclesiastes 3:1
I got my bar exam results, and it turns out I'm in the same boat as several prominent and successful individuals. Which is to say, I failed the bar. The CA bar is notoriously difficult, and only about 45-55% of people pass it. (So it's not really too embarrassing to fail the CA bar. The dean of Stanford's law school failed the CA bar while she was the dean and after she had been a prominent lawyer in other jurisdictions for years. If I had failed one of the bar exams with a 97% pass rate, then I would be embarrassed. Right now, I'm more disappointed and annoyed than anything.)
I really wish I could finally have gotten a break in this whole law school ordeal. I mean, something should go right for once! But no, I always have to do things the hard way. If everything had gone according to my original plan, I would have graduated from law school in May 2007 (instead of May 2011). I would have been admitted to the bar in November 2007. Now, best case scenario, assuming I pass the bar in February, I'll be admitted to the bar in May 2012. That's a full 4 1/2 years later than I planned. People are supposed to have their act together by their mid-20's. I'm going to be 30 before I get admitted to the bar. Then there are still the itinerant years before I land my tenure track job. I'll probably be 35 before I'm stable.
But I take comfort in one of my favorite Old Testament scriptures.
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten...And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed. Joel 2:25-27
God has my back. And what's even better, He'll give me back my lost time. I can't go back in time 10 years and do things differently, but God can fix it so that the lost time will have no lasting negative effects on my life. Whatever was in God's plan for my life before this delay will still be possible after this delay. I just need to hang in there.
Every now and then I feel like I've taken too long to get started on my life. (I know that most of why my start on life was delayed was due to forces outside my control and the rest of the delay was because I served a mission, but melancholy doesn't respond to logic.) When my parents were my age, they owned a house and had two kids, my dad was established in his career, and the only debt they had was their mortgage. I just barely finished school, I'm in limbo in a dead-end job because nobody is hiring lawyers, I still rent, and I have massive student loan debt.
I had an epiphany last weekend, though. One of the speakers at General Conference (I don't remember who) was talking about the life of Christ. The thought came to me that Jesus didn't start His ministry until He was 30. So, the next time my melancholy or some busybody gives me grief for not being with the program, I'll just say that I'm following the example of the Savior!
This past weekend was General Conference. If you want to watch or listen to it, you can go here. If you want to read a good summary and commentary, visit By Common Consent.
I did massive housework while listening to conference. Sadly, I only got halfway done with my fall cleaning. (I try to do spring cleaning, but law school got in the way this year, so now that I don't have that excuse, it's fall cleaning.) So now my apartment looks worse than it did before I started. But my kitchen sparkles. I'll take care of the clutter in my living room this week.
And in other news, I now have a second cat. My neighbor moved last week, and she had an outdoor cat that she couldn't take with her. I offered to take him in, and I introduced him to my cat a few weeks ago. After two meetings, it became clear that this wasn't going to work. The cats hated each other and were constantly hissing. So my neighbor found another neighbor to feed him.
On Saturday, my neighbor came by to check on Kitty. He had been sad and moping all week, but when she showed up, he perked right up. The manager walked by and said that she was going to call the pound because he had been abandoned. (Which was totally not true.) So after the manager left, I said I would take Kitty.
I brought him inside and miraculously the two cats are tolerating one another. They still hiss at each other, but they're learning to share the food and litter box. I'm hoping they'll become friends soon. Kitty stares longingly outside. I feel bad for keeping him in, but I know if the manager sees him outside again, she'll take him to the pound. (And she's so unpleasant that I'm sure she would remove his collar first so that the pound wouldn't know to call me to come get him.)
When I moved out of my parents' house and into my own apartment several years ago, I bought all of my dishes, pots, pans, etc. from the thrift store. They were serviceable items, though they weren't that nice and they didn't match. My mom tried to comfort me by saying that when I get married, I can register for matching dishes. I didn't really care that my dishes didn't match because I was just so excited to be a real grown up with a real apartment.
Well, the coating on my thrift store pans has flaked off, my plates are chipping, my set of 5 pairs of chopsticks is down to 1 1/2, and my last bowl split in half. So, I decided it was time to replace them.
I headed to the thrift store to see if I could find new stuff. The stuff that was there wasn't in good condition, so I passed on it. Then I ordered some cookware off the internet. But I still didn't have plates and bowls. I had to run to the drugstore for some other stuff, and while I was there, I saw a sale on dishes. I bought a beautiful service for four consisting of dinner plates, salad plates, and bowls.
So, now I have brand new cookware and matching dishes. It's my graduation/remission present to myself. But in a way, it's also my non-wedding present to myself. While I certainly would like to find someone to share my life with, I'm ok if I don't. I have a happy and full life; I'm not stuck in some pseudo-adult limbo. And I don't need to wait for a man in order to have matching dishes.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8
Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount with the beatitudes - a list of nine types of people who are blessed, and what they're blessed with. While they're all great, my favorite is "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
I looked pure up in the dictionary, and there was one definition that stuck out to me. "Free from inappropriate elements." We all sin, so our hearts become impure. However, through the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, we can be purified. So, even though we are not pure on our own, we can become pure in heart and we can see God.
While it's certainly possible that some people will have actual visions of deity, I think a more common fulfillment of this scripture is that those who have a pure heart will see divinity all around them.
God's fingerprints are all over creation. The tiny dandelion poking up through the cracks in the driveway, the majestic eagle flying overhead, the stars in the heavens. In addition, the Holy Spirit can be our constant companion. We can literally walk with God throughout our day.
I have a bit of writer's block. I've started about 7 blog posts on various topics, but I can't seem to finish them. I also have a half-finished law review article awaiting my attention. I have no energy to write, or even to think about writing.
For those of you who have experienced writer's block, how did you get through it? I don't have the adrenaline inducing deadlines I had in law school, though if I want to get hired on the academic market I do need to publish. It's just that the deadlines are so nebulous.
Even people who have never cracked a Bible often are familiar with the shortest verse of scripture - Jesus wept.* Those two words contain something profound.
The setting is in the town of Bethany, a short distance from Jerusalem. Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, had fallen ill, and while Jesus was en route, Lazarus died. Jesus told His disciples that He would raise Lazarus from the dead. When He arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days.
Martha was the first to greet Him. She said, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." Jesus responded with one of the most beautiful verses in the New Testament. "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."
Next, Mary greeted Him. "Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled."
