Upward Thought

I posted this  this video before . I was just thinking on some observations about a group of things. The wheat and the tares are planted together at the same time, albeit from different sources. At the time of planting, a seed just looks like a seed. Even when they sprout, they are indistinguishable. I have shared this before, but I will tell it slightly differently now: the Lord once came to me with his hands cupped together, holding a bunch of seeds. He said, "what kinds of seeds are these?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "how would you find out?" I said, "by planting them and seeing what grows." He said, "so it is with all mankind. You can't know who they really are until you incrementally offer them better things over time." It is amazing to me to reflect on my time here, thinking about all the situations where a difference was made between undifferentiated things: an idea, a set of ideas; a person, a group of people; a th

  Watch here

With the help of google, I was trying to reconstruct a long-lost memory of a choir teacher I had in elementary school. Apparently, a more modern artist made a song with similar lyrics to the ones I was unsuccessfully searching for. Here's gem a found on the way: When it comes to life, almost everyone is like almost everyone: bland, monotonous, drab. In a world of lackluster people, be the girl in the pink . All of those kids are singing "nothing is going to steal my joy," but it seems to me only one of those kids believes it. As disciples of Christ, we have a rich inheritance that is designed to stretch us in every direction, as Jesus was stretched figuratively in life and literally in death. The call to us it follow him, replicating in the details of our own lives the same qualities of his. This pulls us in many directions at once until and unless we come to discover and experience the unity in Christ, who draws together all things in himself. Certainly included in the p

One fun thing about my life is that I get to offend all people at the same time. This means on any given issue, odds are there are people out there from every position that can be held on that issue who hate what I have to say about it, or hate me for saying it. I am sure there are plenty of people who think I say far too much about far too much. Even from people who say they appreciate what I say, I often hear "I can't keep up with the volume of what you are producing." An interesting side note on that point that I've been meaning to say: it's important for you to learn how to cope. It is going to get much worse (or better, depending on how much you value truth). Sometimes, the only way to hold on is to let go. Or, better put, the only way to hold on to God is to let go of yourself. Anyway, I want to state for the record that right now I am sharing on the order of an insignificantly small percent of what I could say. The Lord's promises are true, and this one

This post is not going to say what you think it will say. I expect that when most people hear "give the gift of your faith," they would think of sharing religious ideas with another person. That's a wonderful thing to do, in its place, but that's not what I am talking about here. I know there are a lot of parents who pray for their kids. They probably would even say things like, "I pray for my children by name every night." That's nice. But what do you do for them during the day? It's good to ask God to do things for the people we care about, but it's much more effective after we do all that we can for them ourselves [1] with the bounty of blessings he's already given us. One of the most high impact things we can do as parents is exercise faith in behalf of our children. By faith I mean the process I explain in "Through Faith," which if you have not read, you really ought to (it's downloadable from the sidebar on this blog, purc

I saw in the news this morning that Montana banned TikTok. Inevitable legal challenges aside, it is very sad to see such wanton blindness to what things must co-occur, what things occur subsequently, etc. People who live in the realm of immediate consequences are destined to get body-slammed by unanticipated consequences. When you break a principle, you don't just get the specific outcome you are seeking for. You also make it much easier for all other outcomes precluded by that principle to come to pass--sometimes without anything else needing to change. The people pushing for this sort of thing are always the ones acting most surprised when the broken principle affects them in ways "no one could have foreseen." In this case, it seems rather obvious that if the government has the authority to ban TikTok, it can also ban you from using any other app they choose. This reduces the burden of decision from "what people choose to do with their phone is up to them" to

Q: "Is it bad for me to hope to see this terrestrial Babylonian order in which Nations as ours are exalted beyond what Justice would allow and the economic order that causes me to receive more than I deserve; to burn to the ground and be replaced with something much better even if it will cause me pain to go through?" A: All good people will come to the point where they pray day and night that God bring the system down. The desolation of the United States will come according to the prayers of the righteous. Q: "I have [a] desire to help gather Israel but I just can’t see how this will come to pass for me." A: The kingdom is gathered when people do what they know presently where they are presently while seeking and responding to additional light and truth that God brings them. This includes sharing what they have learned with others, and recognizing and looking for what they realize they lack. Much more on both topics later.

Around the first snowfall each winter, we watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We do it at the first snow to keep my kids from pestering me about it before then. They really enjoy those movies. My kids sometimes do their best Gollum impressions, and one of their favorite quotes is what Gollum says to Samwise when Sam takes the rabbits Gollum catches for Frodo: "It ruins it!" Gollum can't understand why anyone would want to cook rabbit, strongly preferring the taste of raw meat. Sometimes, ruining something is a good thing. Good software ruins bad software At work, my team is building a software platform that will revolutionize the way certain chemists spend about 50% of their time by vastly increasing how quickly they are able to apply their understanding to the datasets they analyze in order to extract pertinent information from them. While a lot of technology works behind the scenes to make it possible, the primary difference they will notice is in the interface between

I wrote this the other day. As I was looking for something else this morning, I ran into this revelation that I received on Oct 19, 2018. Someone had asked me "At what point should we expect to see or perform miracles? And am I wrong to expect miracles? Is that asking for signs?"  I replied: "One important thing is to reflect on the lifestyle of discipleship. For example, Peter was not visited by an angel while sitting on his couch. He was freed from prison, where he was placed for preaching the gospel illegally." The Lord then said: "You don't have to go looking for difficult situations in order to see my arm revealed. All who obey my voice will face increasing persecution as they accumulate more and more light. Seek me in all things, follow my voice that you receive, and you will drink from the cup that your spiritual forebears drank from, both in terms of the challenges they overcame and the power of my arm that they witnessed in doing so." Today (

Yea, even doth not Isaiah say: Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? (Mosiah 14:1) God has done, is doing, and will do everything that can be done to ensure your degree of eternal joy is determined only by your own choice, and not for lack of anything from him or anyone else. Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. (2 Nephi 2:27) Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life. (2 Nephi 10:23) One reason so few have chosen to seek and receive all that the Lord has to give is that so few believe he is as good as he and those who know him have