Spiritual Insights...and other stuff

I've been robbed. Someone out there, someone who’s totally miserable, has it out for me. And I know exactly who it is. Do you believe in little people? I do. They get up in the middle of the night and use some kind of thieving contraption to sap all my energy so when I wake up, I’m pooped--completely divested of my vivacity. All that’s left is a semi-liquid-like slop, which, upon hearing the alarm, clumsily spills out of bed onto the floor into a puddle of exhaustion.   I have attempted staying up all night, waiting for them to show up so I can laugh in their puny, little faces while I squish them, but they're too small to see so my efforts to stop them fail every time. I get out of bed in the morning only to find that they've made off with my energy yet again! It is MOST disconcerting, and I only hope I can find a way to exterminate these pests entirely, though I am surviving.  Things used to be worse, you know. If it weren't for some things I learned, they pr...

Amulek describes the atonement as " an  infinite  and  eternal   sacrifice" ( Alma 34:10). Nephi adds that it is "infinite for all mankind " (2 Nephi 25:16; emphasis added). Let's not get too theoretical here, but I think we will agree - and you mathematicians know well - that there are multiple levels of infinity. The level or kind of infinity that really caught my attention this week was mentioned in a segment written by Tad R. Callister on the BYU Religious Study Center's website under "Teaching the atonement." He writes that the atonement is "Infinite in time, both prospectively and retroactively," meaning that it redeems all mankind who lived before it was performed and all those who would live after it was performed. My question is, how could the atonement redeem all the people who lived before it even happened?  To back up Elder Callister, I'll share two scriptures. First, Jarom 1:11 said that the prophets taught the people ...

Have you ever met anyone who just thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread? Let's be honest, the best place to find those people is the high school weight room. Okay, yeah, that was an over-generalization, but no, I'm not talking about the typical football-playing meatheads that we all know and love, I mean a real, king-size, full-blown tool, somebody who thinks they're greater than God Himself. Ever met somebody like that? Whether you have or not, this post is for you. ;) There are several such egomaniacs found within the pages of holy writ, one of which I encountered recently in  Alma 9:6 , who asks the following question: "...Who is God, that sendeth no more authority than one man among this people, to declare unto them the truth of such great and marvelous things?" Though the verse says "they" said this, I imagine some individual was the first to voice those words, for which reason I'm going to refer to said individual as ...

While exploring the wild recesses of YouTube this afternoon, I found myself funkily entranced by a 1982 Oliver Cheatham song called, "Everybody Wants To Be The Boss." Though written more than three decades ago, the song still seems to reflect contemporary society - we all wanna be top dog. Everyone seems to be gunning for president, CEO, supervisor - the list goes on. But what does it mean to be the boss? What are the responsibilities of being a leader? As it turns out, Ammon, a character in the Book of Mormon, is the one who answered this question for me. In the passage I was reading, Ammon and his homies were about to split up to go to different Lamanite cities to preach the word of God. It began with, " Now Ammon being the chief among them, or rather he did administer unto them" ( Alma 17:18 ). So Ammon was head honcho, and he "administered" unto them? Sounds to me like administration, like some kind of business venue. A dab peculiar for the BCs, if y...