Last fall, I attended a presentation by the man who produced this video. He made this clothing to help students understand and appreciate how the Israelite High Priest symbolized Christ. I wonder which detail is meaningful to you. For me, it is the names of the tribes of Israel written on precious stones, borne on the shoulders and over the heart of the High Priest.
Category: Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families
A simple, effective activity for Come Follow Me
Last week I prepared an activity using a map of Jerusalem with the final events of Christ’s life. We followed the numbers and looked up scriptures from the Old Testament that prophesied of these events or used language echoed by Gospel writers. “Did not our hearts burn by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32) The Savior had to re-frame the events his disciples witnessed that last week so they could see him as the Christ. I don’t know what scriptures he shared with them, but perhaps Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 were among them. Those two chapters rend my heart.
The scriptures we looked up last night according to the numbers on the map:
- Zechariah 9:9
- Leviticus 14:36
- (skipped)
- Isaiah 53:4, 6, 10-11
- Isaiah 53:7
- Psalm 22:6-8
- Psalm 22:16-18, Psalm 22:1, Psalm 31:5
- Isaiah 53:9
This was one of my favorite activities all year. Simple is still best, and with busy lives, it helps to have a very direct activity instead of a deep discussion sometimes.
Footnotes
On Mondays for scripture study we work on marking the footnotes of the New Testament assignment. We mark the Joseph Smith Translation footnotes in red and the Greek footnotes in green. This takes some time, but it really helps us understand what we are reading.
Twelve Year Old Bible Student
I enjoyed observing Mark’s Bible move around his bedroom throughout the week and seeing his study notes grow each day. His insights are unselfish and wise. At age twelve, he is a light to me.
A Baptism Here and There
A few weeks ago we studied as a family about being born of water and the spirit. While offering our family prayer after sharing what we learned, I felt I should thank our Heavenly Father for baptism. In an instant, I felt what this ordinance, along with confirmation, have meant to our family. Immense, personal, empowering, enhancing, clarifying, cleansing, gathering, unifying, and sanctifying, these gifts are something to cherish. Our Father is generous, and because of the sacrifice of his Son, we can be baptized. The Holy Ghost fills us and leaves its elevating effects without fanfare. The influence and power of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost seem to come together at important days like baptism, not just at the Jordan River, but for little David, Maria, and each of us. At baptism, we are gathered, and we find where we belong.
Magic
The evening light began in a shade of eerie steel blue and then turned gray with snow. We switched on the four wheel drive and made our way in the blizzard to the airport. We had the wrong time for the flight, so we sat in the park and wait lot for an hour and a half, watching snow rush past in horizontal sheets. We conserved our resources and kept the truck off until it got too cold and I asked Richard to turn on the heat for a few minutes. No keys. Anywhere. We hadn’t left the truck, but they were simply not there. We got out of our seats, opened a door and searched every crevice with flashlights. Finally, after several minutes going through pockets outside, and just as I began my prayer, Richard was back. The keys had fallen down one leg of his snow pants. Salvation in wool socks up against the heating vents. We read our books in silence, every now and then one of us calling our traveler but not getting through.
Our precious traveler retrieved, we made it back to our house, but now 7 inches of snow covered our driveway. Richard cleared the driveway until past 11 pm. Courage in snow pants and an old parka. As I drifted off to sleep, the smoke alarm sounded. Dead battery. Dead tired parents. I got a few hours of sleep before waking at 4 to write to Daniel. It’s a small part of valor, but I claim it.
Today the demon storm shows its effects in the sunlight. Glittery diamonds in a shocking field of blue-white cast their reflection, brightening dim corners in the house and in my mind. Winter has worked its magic and we are friends again.
Stand Forever [in the faith]
Begin by answering the primary questions. There are primary questions and there are secondary questions. Answer the primary questions first. Not all questions are equal and not all truths are equal. The primary questions are the most important. Everything else is subordinate. There are only a few primary questions. I will mention four of them.
1. Is there a God who is our Father?
2. Is Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Savior of the world?
3. Was Joseph Smith a prophet?
4. Is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the kingdom of God on the earth?
By contrast, the secondary questions are unending. They include questions about Church history, polygamy, people of African descent and the priesthood, women and the priesthood, how the Book of Mormon was translated, the Pearl of Great Price, DNA and the Book of Mormon, gay marriage, the different accounts of the First Vision, and on and on.
If you answer the primary questions, the secondary questions get answered too, or they pale in significance and you can deal with things you understand and things you don’t and things you agree with and things you don’t without jumping ship altogether.… the best of all human conditions in this life is not wealth, fame, prestige, good health, the honors of men, security, or even—dare I say it—good grades. As wonderful as some of those things are, the best of all human conditions is to be endowed with heavenly power; it is to be born again, to have the gift and companionship of the Holy Ghost, which is the source of knowledge, revelation, strength, clarity, love, joy, peace, hope, confidence, faith, and almost every other good thing. Jesus said, “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, . . . shall teach you all things.” It is the power by which we “may know the truth of all things.” “It will show . . . [us] all things . . . [we] should do.” It is the fountain of “living water” that springs up unto eternal life.
…Answers to the primary questions do not come by answering the secondary questions. There are answers to the secondary questions, but you cannot prove a positive by disproving every negative. You cannot prove the Church is true by disproving every claim made against it. That will never work. It is a flawed strategy. Ultimately there has to be affirmative proof, and with the things of God, affirmative proof finally and surely comes by revelation through the spirit and power of the Holy Ghost.
I heard someone say recently, “It is okay to have doubts.”
Lawrence E Corbridge, “Stand Forever,” BYU Devotional, January 22, 2019
I wonder about that. The Lord said, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” I have a lot of questions; I don’t have any doubts.
This talk was good and I have been waiting for the transcript to become available so I could share it with you. The ideas were well developed and new. He spoke with power. I loved it.
It’s wilderness week for our family’s study of the New Testament. Our goal is to spend time in our own wilderness each day to learn from Heavenly Father…before we look at our devices and screens. Wish us luck. Here’s the journal sheet.
Stream of Consciousness
After a blustery night and as I enter a gray-brown day, I see winter-swept scenery through bare branches. I have some projects with fabric once the floors dry and I finish dusting. I need to do some clothing alterations. After that, I hope for easier weather when I have to carry my sewing machine to a friend’s house for quilt work with friends who will probably be dressed in gray sweaters. Sometimes the howl of the wind thinks it will remind me it is winter, but I need no reminders. The steely light permeates every corner of the house, a reminder that the sunlight is there, but has traveled through miles of clouds to reach us. Today, we just get the leftovers of sunshine. The views are bleak, but the snowflakes on my window help.
Even my church assignment (I still do not feel it is a “calling”) is about the dead. Shoulders hunched and eyes focused on computer screens, I study clues from handwriting of those long gone. I sit among people 20-30 years older than I am in research classes and feel young! Woot! I have never felt so isolated, but I anticipate connection with living people will be possible in this work, eventually. I am entering my fifth month away from church assignments involving people who breathe. My temple and family history assignment still is not defined, and I wait. It’s a busy kind of waiting, as I have so much to learn. I am giving many hours a week to a work that feels absolutely invisible, kind of like housework. Ha!
My assigned ministering route was changed and not a single woman wants me in her home. Some have had it with churchy things. Another just needs to get out of the house rather than have a visit. She helped me make the snowflakes on my window as we talked this week. I count it an act of trust when I get a text from one asking me to give her son a ride home from school. Discipleship and ministry are among the indefinable things.
I gift myself one day of study a week. In these books, I lose myself to a degree that I call indulgence. Church prophets have often told women they are needed and important, but now I feel I have been given a task to prove it. I have come to understand that my New Testament knowledge, gleaned over years and years, is needed in my family. I still apologize and feel insecurity when I let myself be seen by my family for who I am: a scripture nerd. I spend time coming up with activities that will allow my sons to come to love the New Testament as I do. It takes all my self-control not to spill out what I have learned and what I feel, and what the Jews did, and what the landscape is like, and what a different translation teaches, and literary techniques of Gospel writers, and, and, and, and…Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart. In a house full of men who do not enjoy conversation, I do a lot of pondering.
A few weeks ago I realized that Tim and Mark have seen very few plays, so I bought tickets to The Wizard of Oz at Hale Center Theater for later today. This will be a good start to a four-day weekend for them, and we are all ready for it. There was a bomb threat at Tim’s school this week and half the student body stayed home on Wednesday. This week I have learned that I need to get used to my children being in mortal peril. Let’s celebrate by watching Dorothy get swept away by a tornado and flying monkeys!
Witness
Today Daniel’s apartment building caught on fire in Santiago, Chile. He escaped, thanks to living angels who stopped to warn, guide, and unlock doors. Feel free to join me in prayers of gratitude for his protection. He grabbed his scriptures, wallet, keys, camera, and photos which were already prepared for travel. He already had his shoes on when the call came to escape. He and the other elders had to abandon a smoky stairwell with hot handrails for a different route out. When they were trapped on the roof, with only locked doors to stairs going down, someone came up to open a locked door to a safe stairwell. A quote from his message today:
Needless to say, that was an intense experience. Maybe we were never in real danger. But my mindset changed. As a missionary, I already have very few personal belongings, but as I stood there with reminders of my family and my scriptures with all my markings and couldn’t think of anything else I would want to save I realized how easily we can get distracted by things that don’t last. There are a lot of things I left behind that don’t matter, and now that’s especially clear to me.
-Elder Daniel Ross
God really does protect us, guide us, answer prayers, and puts people, thoughts, and when necessary angels in our lives to help us return to live with him again. The Savior truly understands us, and through his infinite sacrifice and atonement we can be cleansed from sin.
I was very unwell all morning before I heard about this. Maybe I knew on some level he was in danger. I also felt complete peace when he announced his call (mission assignment) last April. I don’t need any more assurance that all will be well, whatever things look like at present. I don’t think he has his “cloak,” but he does have his “parchments,” (2 Timothy 4:13), and knows the value of them.
And last of all, here is a link to the journal page for our study of Matthew 2 and Luke 2 at our house for the week of January 14-20.
Four choices of study for Matthew 1 and Luke 1
Last Monday I posted the worksheet that I made for our family for the Come Follow Me curriculum week one. The important thing is that our family followed our plan during the week, and we had a good discussion on Sunday. They won’t be making any training videos for family discussions using our family, but it was good.
For this week, we have four family members at home, so I split the readings in Matthew 1 and Luke 1 into four stories: Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth/Zacharias (counts as one), and Gabriel. Each of us will choose one person (or couple) to study this week.
If you care to see the study guide I made for Matthew 1 and Luke 1, this is a link to the document . Some of the questions come from the Church study guide, and some are my own. I feel silly posting this. But there it is.
Correction: on worksheet, the last reference for Gabriel should be Luke 1:26-37, not Matthew.