“God is a great compensator.”
A little girl saw a plastic pearl necklace at the grocery store and pleaded for them.
Her mom told her she could have them—but she would need to earn the $2.50 herself. She worked hard, doing extra chores to save up money.
Finally, she went to the store, proudly handing over the money. The plastic pearls were hers.
She loved them and wore them everywhere, every day.
One day, as she was going to sleep, her dad asked her, “Honey, do you love me?”
“Oh, yes!” the girl responded.
“Will you give me your pearls then?” the dad asked.
Many dead ends only look that way to our mortal eyes.
I have a friend who fell in love and one day, the spirit said, “You will be sealed July 30th.”
She believed it and planned on being married to her husband on that day. However, due to circumstances out of her control, they got married in October.
She was so confused. She had truly thought it was the spirit! It was a small thing, but because of it, she started to struggle trusting herself and the spirit.
What kind of house am I building the Lord?
So the story goes, there was once a master carpenter who worked for the same master his whole career. One day, he told his master he was retiring and the master asked him to build one last house.
The master said, “Scrimp on nothing. I want the finest materials used.”
But the chief carpenter got a bit lazy. The finest materials were inconvenient to find, so he used what he had. He turned a blind eye to details skipped. He cut corners.
“Don’t look for new landscapes, use new eyes to see what is already there.”
My first time making whipped cream, I thought that the powdered sugar was what made it fluffy. So, I added the cream, started the mixer, and added some powdered sugar. Thirty seconds later, I added more. Every thirty seconds after that, I added more until, five minutes later, the whipped cream was heightened and whipped.
And then I tried it. It was so dense with sugar that it all had to be thrown away.
I asked my mom what I did wrong and why it was dense.
A lack of understanding is not a lack of faith – it is just a fact of faith.
The endowment session in the temple was really hard for me.
Many times I would leave frustrated that I had focused more on not falling asleep than the spirit. And not just that—even when I was fully awake, I sometimes would leave feeling like I was missing something.
I thought maybe I should take a break from the endowment. But then, almost immediately after that, I had the thought “Study faith.”
“The world sees peace as the absence of pain, but Jesus offers solace despite our suffering.”
An impenetrable fortress of peace—
You know those random visuals that your head comes up with that just stick? This is one for me. An impenetrable fortress of peace.
In the big things that come my way occasionally or in the small problems that come my way consistently—I want nothing to come between myself and peace. But MAN that is easier said than done.
“Obedience is a choice … between our own limited knowledge and power and God’s unlimited knowledge and omnipotence.”
A nobleman asked his servants to do four things:
Plant olive trees,
Build a hedge,
Set watchmen,
And build a watchtower. (D&C 101)
The servants planted the trees and the hedge and put watchmen around it. But while building the foundation for the watchtower, they started to wonder…why are we doing this?
“Take one simple step forward in faith – and then another.”
Guest post by Sarah Keenan:
Toddlers and sacrament meetings don’t mix to begin with.
Does anyone else feel like sacrament reverence has gotten so much harder post-pandemic shutdown?
My 18-month-old was born a week before the shutdown and didn’t go to church in person for most of his life and now that we are finally back, the time feels full of snack dumps, meltdowns, and attempted pew escapes.
Every sacrament meeting feels like a battle, and I often leave getting absolutely nothing from it.