From the Archives: The Fourth of July

A happy 4th of July to you. This is America's Independence Day. Think of your freedoms and what it cost to obtain them.

The History Channel has a nice summary of the events surrounding our gaining our freedom. The article is here: "U.S. Declares Independence".

Another interesting article by George Will can be found at Townhall. It is called "The Valuable Self-Validating Tradition".

Here are two more quotes of special interest to Mormons.

Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be afree from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but bserve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written. (Ether 2:12)

"When the people shall have torn to shreds the Constitution of the United States, the 'Elders of Israel' will be found holding it up to the nations of the world..." President John Taylor (Journal of Discourses 21:8)

(Thanks to JR for those!)

Enjoy the reading and enjoy the Fourth. Think about what it all means for us.

Pray for People Around the World

There are political hotspots around the world. Iran is in the forefront right now, but every country, including the USA, faces problems and issues of one kind or another. My prayers for people everywhere are growing quite long.

It is important to remember that God is in charge, but it is also important to remember that we can always petition Him in prayer in every situation.

We all have personal and immediate issues to pray about, of course, but let us not forget to pray for those around the world and here in our own country.

Why Religion?

I was listening to my CDs of Will and Ariel Durant's book, The Lessons of History. One thing that Will Durant said was that he felt religion, and particularly Christianity, was necessary to people because religion is a stronger support of moral codes than anything else, and that when religion is abandoned, so are morals. Dr. Durant is something of an agnostic. He says he believes in God if God is defined simply as a creative force.

My question for you, dear readers, is, "Do you think he's right?" Or do you think religion is no more necessary to maintain morality (and you can toss ethics into the mix, as well) than law or tradition or education or anything else?

Discuss.

For the Cook in You

I'm going through a spell of not being able to decide what to write about on my blogs, but I don't want to stop posting. One thing that is of interest to a great many people is cooking. We have to feed our families and there are always social events that require a contribution from us. We don't want to serve the same things all the time.


It's easy enough to Google for recipes and cooking sites. In fact, I once wrote a post covering a number of the common ones with recipes of every type for every occasion. You may find several sites in that piece that would be of interest to you.


There are a couple of sites that I would like to link to here because they have lots of different kinds of recipes and cookbook reviews and are general very interesting. One is Simply Recipes and the other is 101 Cookbooks which features primarily vegetarian recipes. The variety and depth in these sites make them worth your time to see if you can find some things to add to your cooking repertoire.

"Recovering and Discovering Truth"

I often search the Ensign for various topics of interest to me. This morning I did a search on the word "seeking". I did not have a definite idea of what I myself was seeking, but I was curious about what I would find by searching for that one word.

While I found many articles and speeches from the Ensign, one that particularly caught my eye was by Edwin Brown Firmage and appeared in the April 1981 issue of the magazine. The title is "Recovering and Discovering Truth". Elder Firmage's topic is encapsulated in his first paragraph:

I had an experience some time ago that led me to think and to pray intensely. The whole incident caused me to reflect on the ways we gain knowledge from our Heavenly Father, and on the intimate relationship that exists between intellectual and spiritual means of acquiring knowledge.

That interests me--the intimate relationship between intellectual and spiritual means of acquiring knowledge. Here are two more paragraphs from near the end of the article:

This very process argues against the false idea that prayer, study, and meditation, or deep thought are merely attempts to convince oneself of a particular principle. To the person who is sensitive to divine communication, pure revelation floods the very being in a way that makes it unmistakable. Whether the truth be in science, philosophy, or religion, that knowledge is now his in a way that it was not before. Again, Einstein said of faith: “Real faith, either to a scientist or a businessman or a minister of religion, involves the problem and struggle of searching.” The Lord said to Joseph and Oliver that “you must study it out in your mind.”

and

Finally, I have learned that one must use the truth he possesses before asking for more. An ancient Tibetan proverb says, “He who knows and fails to practice the precepts is like a man who lights a lamp in the darkness and then closes his eyes.” We have a loving Heavenly Father who possesses all knowledge. He is willing to share it with us as fast as we are able to obtain it by worthy effort and then truly make it “ours” by living it.

In the article, Elder Firmage quotes various philosophers giving their thoughts about where knowledge comes from. It makes for an interesting article.

I believe that our Heavenly Father does bless mankind with intellectual knowledge as well as spiritual knowledge. He is not limited to only things of the spirit. I also believe that He expects us to put forth a lot of effort to learn as much as we can and to think about what we've learned and how it can be applied to solve a problem or to answer a question before He will send to us the necessary missing knowledge.

What are your thoughts about this?

Consequences

There are consequences, good or bad, to every choice we make. A realization and an acceptance of consequences will make us freer than we otherwise would be. This may sound like a bit of a contradiction, but an Ensign article by Elder Robert S. Wood of the Seventy explains it better than I can. The article is titled "On the Responsible Self" and appears in the March 2002 Ensign. Elder Wood says:

Perhaps the symbolic nature of the second temptation is the least apparent of the three. But on reflection, this temptation points to a tendency to which we all are subject—the tendency to desire some miraculous delivery from the consequences of our actions; to be borne up, if you will, by angels or divine providence, with little effort on our part.

He then discusses personal responsibility and consequences in the rest of the article. It's good food for thought.

We do all have a tendency to want to be delivered from any negative consequences of our choices, but it is better and more freeing to make choices with positive consequences. Easier said than done, I know, but it is what we must strive for. Repentance and the Atonement make it possible to correct the mistakes we make (and we will make mistakes) and move forward to progress toward better choices.

There are an endless number of choices that we make throughout our lives. Although it is now popular to admonish one another to not judge, we do have to make judgements every day as to which choices we should make. The choices range from simple things such as what to have for breakfast to somewhat more serious choices such as whether or not to write that blog post about some favorite speculation of ours that might (or might not) be a bad influence on others. We also have major choices to make about education, jobs, marriage, and how we live the gospel. Every one of these choices has some kind of consequence. It would be a good thing for us to learn to consider the consequences anytime we make a choice. That will free us by helping us to make choices with positive consequences rather than negative consequences.

Cute Things

My apologies for being such a slacker at blogging. I've had a lot going on, but I will try to post more often.

I recently became aware of two websites that are sure to make you smile!

Cute Things Falling Asleep

Cute Things Laughing

There's nothing like babies, kittens, and puppies!!!