Living Prophets

Last week I taught Relief Society, Lesson #16 in the Joseph Smith manual, and the lesson went pretty well. I didn't have time to cover everything, which quite often happens, but we had a good discussion with the material we did cover.

It was a good lesson for me particularly to give for a few reasons. (I think the Lord does that on purpose.) But one of those reasons has been on my mind both from when I first read the lesson to now a week later--well longer really, but I'll get to that.

The title of the lesson was Revelation and the Living Prophet, and so of course it dealt with modern revelation. It's a great thing. I'm so glad to live during a time when the fullness of the gospel is on the Earth so I can benefit from living prophets. I've tried following their counsel for many, many years.

In fact, I think I've addressed one of these before, at the time Pres. Hinckley passed away. That is, when Pres. Benson was the prophet, he asked us to read the Book of Mormon every day. And so, with very few exceptions, I have been doing that for many, many years. And then in 2000, I remember reading in the R.S./Priesthood manual of that time--(I think it was Joseph F. Smith), that the prophet of focus, encouraged the saints to read from all of the scriptures every day--Bible, Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. I'll confess I haven't done it every day, but at least a few times a week, I try to read from the other books in the canon. And I love the scriptures more, I think, from becoming familiar with them in this way.

So, you're wondering, where am I going with this? It is good just to bear my testimony, I guess, but there's another point.

In the lesson is this quote that I actually heard some time when I was at BYU from a returned missionary, maybe he was my home teacher, I don't remember. I don't even remember who it was, just that it was an RM. Anyway, we were talking about daily scripture study and he said that he reads general conference talks every day and not from the other scriptures (I don't recall if it was ever or not as much), because of this quote. (Though I'm sure he paraphrased it and didn't have the source, so I've long wondered what the actually quote was--nice to have these manuals now!)

"Brother Brigham took the stand, and he took the Bible, and laid it down; he took the Book of Mormon, and laid it down; and he took the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and laid it down before him, and he said: ‘There is the written word of God to us, concerning the work of God from the beginning of the world, almost, to our day. And now,’ said he, ‘when compared with the [living] oracles those books are nothing to me; those books do not convey the word of God direct to us now, as do the words of a Prophet or a man bearing the Holy Priesthood in our day and generation. I would rather have the living oracles than all the writing in the books.’"

At the time, it struck me a little funny because I felt like a contradiction. The prophet had told me (us--everyone) to read the Book of Mormon every day, so that's what I was doing, and now this guy was insinuating that I should instead just be reading conference talks every day.

Well, as indicated already, I didn't stop reading the BoM every day because of that, but the conversation has stuck with me and even in teaching the quote in Relief Society last week, I've wondered how I'm supposed to address it, both in the lesson and in my life. What is its significance?

First, I think it's important to recognize that the gospel doesn't ever change. Last Saturday night, before giving the lesson, I ran through the most recent conference addresses just to verify my supposition, which was confirmed--that every single talk, with the exception of Pres. Monson's concluding remarks, incorporated verses from the ancient canon. And even in Pres. Monson's concluding remarks, although verses were not included, the principles he touched on could have been referenced to other scriptures easily enough.

So I came up with a few analogies, hoping to understand. The first I thought of was it's like the difference between canned fruit and fresh fruit. It's the same thing, but one is a little better for you--coming more recently from the vine. But that's not the whole sense of it. I also thought of it being like a snowball vs. a snowman. There are snowballs in the snowman but there's a lot more there and it's applied to your current situation. That's another aspect of it, but still not the whole sense. And then I thought it's like if you could only shop from one store for a whole year, would you shop at a store with vintage clothing or would you shop at Super Wal-Mart where you can get your clothes and food and a variety of other needed items as well? Well of course, you'd take the latter. Even if you don't particularly like Wal-Mart. But that's not the point. I think all of these analogies have some relevance, and of course, no analogy is ever complete and you can always take one too far and it loses its validity.

But I think the last was most helpful for me. The fact is that we're not limited to one store per year. But that's kind of the point Brigham Young was making. "I would rather have"--is a conditional clause. That means that there's an "if" attached to it, even if not uttered. And it seems natural to assume that the "if" here would be "if I had to choose between one and the other." And he also indicates why--because we need the words of the prophet's today for our today's need. But how can he say this and at the same time have a prophet say we need to read the Book of Mormon every day? Because the principles are all the same, and the living prophets are going to be very familiar with the ancient prophets, so for us to have a better understanding of what the living prophets are telling us, we need to understand how the Lord worked yesterday. It helps us understand how He works today and love Him more.

So in the end, who was right? Me or the RM? Well, actually neither one of us. We both should have been reading both the conference addresses and the Book of Mormon. And so, well, I've tried at various times in the past to do better at reading conference talks, but it hasn't stuck like it should. So that was another reason I needed this lesson, to bring that back to me. I've been reading them again this week, and it's been great with every talk I've read. So much amazing stuff! How blessed I am to have these words in my life. I know they're from the Lord, and I write these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Evening Job

I quit the evening job. It was too much. And it's been amazing to see what a little more sleep can do.
I suppose I still feel like I have two jobs, though. Writing takes up so much of my time. But I finished round 3 since receiving my thesis advisor's comments, which would actually be round 6 total, I guess. But I felt pretty good about this one, will probably run through it one more time before giving it back, but I'm back thinking what am I going to do when it's done now? It's like sending a child off to school.
Well, I suppose it's an easy enough fix--just write another book, right?

Widgets and Google

A friend of mine had the widget you now see at the bottom left--a pretty cool little thing to see what sites and what cities people come from. Funny, too, to see what Google searches bring people here, though I'm sure in all of those cases they're disappointed. For example, someone looked for "mourning Seuss" and came here because I had a post about mourning and Seuss appeared in my book list. And then today I noticed someone had searched "tennis love stories books" and pulled up my "Love the Tennis Way, Kind of." Oh, and about that, I have since learned that love is just plain zero. Did I ever go back and edit that? I don't think so. Not that it has any terrible significance to the post, but it's interesting nonetheless. And then the other poor person, searched for Roald Dahl the Twits and landed on "Writer's Block"--not sure exactly how that happened, but I'm sure it helped not at all. In any case, pretty funny what searches will bring you to. Anyone stay thanks to a funny search? :)

Worrkkk

So, what am I doing now? Don't you love when that question shows up in the your status line on Facebook? Uh--I'm reading "what are you doing right now?" on your website. That's what I'm doing. What about you?

Maybe you don't use Facebook--that might be a good thing.

But I have enjoyed it for getting back in touch with some old friends from my home town as well as keeping in touch even with people in the DC area that I never see any more or who have moved to other parts of the country. I think I love it best when they post pictures and share their life, as well as reading those statuses. It's a nice way to keep in touch, so I would recommend Facebook. Just avoid the games. Some terribly addictive.

But aside from that, I'm working. And two jobs! I'm not sure how long this can go on, but I started one job last week, by recommendation of my roommate--a data entry job, just in the evenings. It doesn't pay terrifly well (I'm editing now--that isn't so much of a typo as it looks--I was trying to decide between terrifically and terribly, hadn't realized though that I'd merged them), but not as bad as temp jobs outside of the DC area still. And since it's in the evening, I thought that would be something I might be able to stick with when I did get a day job to help pay off these debts I have.

And it so happened that the day after I started there, the temp company that I've worked for for the past 1 1/2 years called with a job in Alexandria, really close actually, a job I can drive to, so have my car with me, as well as having hours that would permit me to get to the evening job on time. And though it's rush hour, I'm driving against traffic. Nice.

And so as of yesterday, I've had two jobs. It's pretty rough, as two jobs tend to be, I guess. The temp day job is 8-5 and the evening from 5:30 to 10:30. So I leave at 7:30 and don't get home til 11:00. :(

The good thing about the day job, though, is that I have time to write, as I appreciate. And the evening job keeps me busy for the full five hours, so I'm not at home wasting time with stupid tv shows that I'm getting tired of and only watch because I'm too tired to think about doing something else or too tired of doing the same thing I've been doing all day--likely writing or playing stupid computer games that I need to stop doing anyway.

Anyway, the other interesting thing about the day job is that it's for the same company that wasn't happy about my not wearing a suit to the interview. It's a different location--their warehouse. I still have to dress nice, but not in a suit. Thank goodness!

Birthday Meme

Hey, I know, I've been absent for awhile. I think it's because I'm so concentrated on my thesis I can hardly think enough about other things to write a sentence. Maybe. Sorry for my neglect. But I've been reading some other blogs and a friend did this, so I thought it sounded fun. Play if you want.

Look up your birthday in Wikipedia. Pick 4 events, 3 births, 2 deaths, and 1 holiday.

July 21

Events:

• 1949 - The United States Senate ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty.
• 1969 - Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon, during the Apollo 11 mission.
• 1970 - After 11 years of construction, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt is completed.
• 1997 - The fully restored USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides") celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.

Births:

• 1899 - Ernest Hemingway, American writer, Nobel laureate (d. 1961)
• 1924 - Don Knotts, American actor (d. 2006)
• 1992 - Rachael Flatt, American figure skater

Deaths:

• 1403 - Henry Percy, English nobleman and soldier (b. ca.1364)
• 1998 - Alan Shepard, astronaut (b. 1923)

Holiday

• Singapore: Racial Harmony Day