I asked myself:  Who am I?  How would I define myself?  What do I stand for?

I answered, first and foremost, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Secondly, I am a professional father.

And thirdly, I am a professional ponderer.

I'm probably no different in that regard than anyone else.  We're always thinking.  We probably differ from the rest of God's creations that way.  I can't imagine that there is much going on in the mind of a grazing cow or in the mind of a cat waiting by a gopher hole or napping on a window sill in the sunshine.  They're not good at working out complex problems, and animals don't create things like humans do.

You and I spend our waking hours thinking.  A lot of our thoughts are wasted efforts.  That's called worrying.  I like the attitude of Atticus in the book “To Kill A Mockingbird.”  Atticus was always saying, “It's not time to worry yet.”

It's never time to worry.  It's wasted effort.  Our hymn says, “Ye fearful Saints, fresh courage take; the clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.”  (Hymns, page 285).

     We have a lot of clouds and shadows hanging over and around us, but most of the storms we worry about don't break.  We need to ponder upon our potential problems and prepare, but we shouldn't spend our time endlessly worrying about them and losing sleep.

Joseph of Egypt knew that seven very bad years were coming.  He made a plan, laid in supplies, and saved all the people of Egypt, plus the fledgling family that became the multi-millions that is now the House of Israel.

My great, great grandfather was Thomas Condon, the pioneer geologist of Oregon.  He was the science and math department of the University of Oregon when it opened for classes in 1876.  Prior to that he lived in the Columbia River Gorge in The Dalles.  He had a cabinet filled with magnificent geological specimens, fossils, and artefacts.  It was very valuable, and irreplaceable.  Geologists from back east came to visit him with the intention of purchasing his collection for more money than he'd ever seen.

The offer was unexpected and very tempting.  He was a poor Congregational minister with a large family to raise and to educate.  His visitors could not understand how he could refuse such a generous offer.  They pointed out that his valuable collection was in a wooden house in a wooden town in a windy gorge, and that a fire could destroy everything.

Selling his collection would be like selling a part of himself.  He refused the offer.

After his visitors left he began worrying.  The visitors were right.  Gale-force winds from the west often came up the gorge.  If a fire broke out, he could lose everything.  He couldn't sleep as he worried over the thought of a potential fire.  Worry was useless, he decided, so he'd make a plan.

He remembered some old carpeting.  It could be soaked in the water trough that watered the horses.  There was some lumber lying around that could make a scaffolding.  The wet carpets could be laid out on the wood-shingle roof.

Thomas made a plan, and then he was able to go to sleep.

Just a few days later, at noon, with a gale wind coming up the gorge, a fire broke out in the Globe Hotel.  The fire was several blocks away, was spreading quickly, and came roaring through the town.  Thomas sprang into action, and people came to help.  They worked feverishly.  One man passed out from the heat and exhaustion.  When it was all over, everything had burned all around them, including the trees and the factory on the other side; but the Condon's little wooden house stood unscathed in the middle of the destruction.

There is more to that story, but the moral is that it's not time to worry yet.  You plan and prepare, and then quit worrying.

I said that I'm a professional ponderer.  We all are.  But I'm a ponderer with a pen.  A pen helps my pondering.  A pen makes me ponder in an organized way.  I didn't know where these thoughts were going to go when I asked myself who I was and what defines me.

Pondering with a pen requires me to be efficient with my thoughts and words, to lay them out in order; and when I'm done, my thoughts are concise, preserved, and can be reviewed without having to hash through the whole thing again.

I'm a professional ponderer.  I'd like to think that I'm like Thomas Condon that way.  He needed to prepare a sermon to be given each Sunday.  He loved his work, and he also loved studying geology.  His Sunday sermons were prepared as he hiked the hills looking for rocks and fossils.  The gear that he carried was a rock pick for breaking rocks open, a knapsack, a pen and paper.

I'm also a professional father and a disciple of Jesus Christ.  The big reason that I ponder with a pen is so that I can leave a legacy for my posterity that will help them to also be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.  This is the greatest desire of my heart.  I hope that they can benefit from the things I've learned in life, and therefore, avoid many of the pitfalls and traps of mortality.

I cherish the gift of being able to think.  I cherish the gift of being able to choose my course of action.  I value the gift of agency.  I love my Savior.  He has done everything for me.  He enables me to think, to make proper choices, to organize, to write, and to be a light and a guide to my posterity.

My counsel to them is to likewise be a disciple of Jesus Christ, to study and to ponder His words, to follow Him faithfully through these turbulent times, to plan and to prepare, and to then quit worrying.