Christmas Links

Wise Men Are Seeking
Feed My Lambs
Knowest Thou the Condescension of God?
Why Do We Celebrate the Pagan-Influenced Christmas and Easter?
Is Christmas or Easter More Important?
Messiah Clicky-oke: Sing (and click) along with Handel's most famous piece of music

Living in a Book

One of the blurbs on the back of Stephenie Meyer's book The Chemist says in part that "People do not want to just read Meyer's books; they want to climb inside them and live there."

Well, I for one would not enjoy that at all. First she gave us the Twilight books. Vampires, shape-shifters, and werewolves. All of them get their lives pretty disrupted. Okay, maybe life as one of the background characters would be alright, but I don't see how their lives would be any better than my own.

Then we've got the post-apocalyptic world in The Host. I have yet to find any post-apocalyptic world more appealing than my current reality.

And next comes The Chemist. The characters in this book have a kill-or-be-killed existence for the majority of the story, with a touch of living in hiding, constantly looking over their shoulders. Still not something I'd choose.

If I did have to climb inside a book and live there, I think I'd have to go with a straight romance genre. Their misfortunes tend to be along the lines of lost jobs, minor accidents, and miscommunication. I'm not really eager to experience such things, but at least I'm not highly likely to die from them. Plus, I have a pretty good chance of finding true love in the bargain.

His Sheep Know His Voice

During Sunday School today we had a long discussion about how to tell the difference between inspiration from Heavenly Father and inspiration from the devil. At one point the teacher asked why it is important for us to study out the scriptures and words of our prophets for ourselves rather than just accept them immediately. I had two thoughts on that and shared one of them, which was that by studying ourselves we know the doctrine better and can better compare impressions and ideas to what has already been revealed, but by the time I had expressed that thought I had forgotten the other part of my answer. Well, I remember now and want to share it, but first I will tell a story from my life.

Years ago, right after I had moved to Provo, I learned of a blog some neighbors of mine had made in connection with a series of related pranks they had pulled over the course of a semester. They had each written under a specific pseudonym, but as I read through this blog I couldn't keep track of who had written what. In fact, at one point I thought there might be more pseudonyms than people writing.

Over the next couple of years, I spent a lot of time with these neighbors and became pretty good friends with them. Then we all went our separate ways. Some time after I had last seen these friends, I remembered this blog and felt inclined to read through it again. I found the web address and started reading, expecting to be a little confused about who had posted what again, but it was not so. Within just a couple lines of each post, I knew exactly who had written it. I checked against the credits of a youtube video about their pranks and found that I had been correct. After getting to know these men, I knew their individual voices.

The more time we spend prayerfully studying the words of the Lord, the better our relationship with Him will be, and the better we will be at distinguishing His voice.