Light
Rays of Light
I was intrigued when I heard the talk by Alexander Dushku in the April 2024 general conference. He spoke of the rays of light that most of us receive versus the explosion and pillar of light that came in response to Joseph’s first vocal prayer.
Read MoreSeeing My Future—A Poem
As she came walking down the hall
The lights went dancing off the wall;
The sight quite took me by surprise
For they were coming from her eyes.
Turning Up the Lights
In 1941 electricity came to our farm west of Haines. I wasn’t around then. Prior to that time my parents lighted their house with kerosene lamps. Dad wired the old house, and hung a single light bulb from the ceiling in the center of each room. A string hung from the bulbs, which you pulled to turn on the lights. My 9-year-old sister and 7-year-old brother spent the next week entertaining themselves by going into a dark room, twirling in circles until their hands contacted and pulled the string, and then exclaiming, “How did we ever even see before?!!” The contrast between the light emitted by a kerosene lamp and a 75-watt bulb was dramatic.
Read MoreGive Me Light
As a 19-year-old young man I was given this book. (The light-blue Book of Mormon with a golden Moroni on the front cover). Because of a voice which I had previously heard in answer to my very anguished, first-ever prayer—a voice which simply said, “Everything is going to be all right”—I knew that something was going to happen when I opened it. I took it home and stood it upright in the center of the desk in my room.
Read MoreGophers
A gopher is an animal worthy of a short study. The most remarkable thing about a gopher is that it lives a mostly solitary existence in the dark. A gopher’s life is not an enviable one, yet many people seem bent on becoming gophers.
Read MoreWhat Has Jesus Done For Me?
I was asked in general conference to write a one-page summary of what the Savior has done for me.
He brought me from darkness into light. I hadn’t even known that I was in darkness. The contrast is extreme. Because of my rescue, the possibility exists that none of my posterity will ever experience that darkness. I fervently pray that may be so.
What Would I Tell 12-Year-Old Me?
The title of this article is a question asked in the April 2021 general conference.
Twelve-year-old me was timid, shy, afraid, unsure, ignorant, full of self doubt, weighed down by sin, and unable to break free of habits; but desirous of being good, doing good, and of becoming better.
Sacred or Scared
I noticed this morning that the difference between the words “sacred” and “scared” is just two transposed letters. I wondered if there was enough relationship between the two words to justify writing an article.
Read MoreGroping in the Dark
Our former stake patriarch, Elmer Perry, once told of a terrifying experience he had while driving on a dark night on a highway with no center line or shoulder lines during a heavy rain storm. With limited vision, and no lines to guide him, he couldn’t tell whether he was on the road or not.
Read MoreSunrise
June 20, 2020, the second-longest day of the year. I am up early so that I can watch the sunrise. Sunrise will happen at about 5:15 on the right hand flank of China Cap in the Wallowa Mountains. The sky is filled with a broken cloud cover. The sun is still well below the horizon. Therefore, because of the curvature of the earth, the light of the sun is able to hit the underside of the clouds in my valley. The result is spectacular. An orange, fan-shaped light source below and to the left of China Cap has turned the entire sky orange, yellow, pink, and red.
Read MoreThe Gift of Repentance
Of all the gifts that our Redeemer gave us through His Atonement, surely the gift of repentance is one of the greatest.
Before I learned of this freely-offered gift, I didn’t like myself very much. I was dirty. I was miserable. I was always going to feel that way because there was nothing that I could do about it. I was always going to feel dirty and miserable because of my sins, and I was powerless to stop sinning or to change anything.
Leave Five Things Behind
If you would be a light to the world, as the Savior enjoined His Saints to be, then you should strive to leave positive things in your wake, wherever you go.
Read MoreRhinahippedeemotapus Complex
Adam showed two-and-a-half-year-old Caleb a picture of a rhinoceros the other day, and asked him what it was. Caleb knew. “That’s a rhinahippedeemotapus,” he said. I like that. As I thought about it, I decided that Caleb’s rhinahippedeemotapus is like other churches. They have many of the right syllables, but no idea how to correctly put them together.
Read MoreLiving Life in Crescendo
I began life as a shy child. As a teenager I was nervous, and scared of crowds and the future. I wasn’t happy. I wanted to be, but everything looked dark. I wanted to be a good person. People thought I was good, and thought that I was happy, but I really didn’t like who I was. I had no idea how to change things.
Read MoreWalking in Darkness at Noon-day
One night in our early married years, the phone rang after we’d turned out the lights and gone to bed. I leaped out of bed and ran in the dark from one end of the house to the other to answer it before it woke the baby. On the way, I stubbed my toe. I answered the phone in the pleasantest voice I could muster, and found that I was speaking to the bishop. I don’t remember what the conversation was about, but I distinctly remember the pain I was in from my throbbing toe. I’m sure Bishop Jarman would have been greatly distressed to know that I was suffering while talking to him, but I didn’t let him in on my secret.
Read MoreTurning Up the Lights
Joseph said that he went to the woods “on the morning of a beautiful, clear day.” He may have knelt in the shade; but if it was cool, and since he was obviously enjoying the feel of the spring day, he probably knelt in the sunshine.
Read MoreLighting the World
Our purpose in life is to bring light into the world.
Each person is born with the light of Christ. It is a free gift. What each individual does with that light thereafter is up to him. Many extinguish it. Many let it lie dormant, neither extinguishing nor feeding it. Some work to increase their light and the lights of others.
The Old Headlight
I just awoke from a dream which has a good enough moral that it deserves recording. In the dream I was given a last-minute assignment to give a talk to a group of people.
Read MoreThe Plan of Deliverance
Alma, interestingly, in just two chapters of his book, uses five different names for God’s plan. He calls it “the plan of restoration” in Alma 41:2
Read MoreThe Book of Mormon—The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me
I had made the 8-hour drive from Oregon, U.S.A. to Provo, Utah to see my girlfriend at Brigham Young University. She took me to the fast and testimony meeting…
Read MoreAmmon’s Story—Another Viewpoint
Lamoni was king over the Lamanites in the land of Ishmael. As such he had power over the life and death of the people of his realm…
Read MoreIgnoramuses
Half a dozen times in the Doctrine and Covenants Jesus says, “I am the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.”
Read More