For Part Two of the references in this talk, click the link.
Been a heavy couple of days. I could use a little levity. At least a tiny bit. Hopefully it's not too soon.
Conference isn't always serious - Elder Paul H. Dunn, in his talk "Young People - Learn Wisdom in Thy Youth" really tries to reach out to the kids with a little levity around going to church.
The First Poem
“One day for church
Six days for fun.
The odds of going to heaven,
Six to one.”
The Second Poem (attributed to his father),
“Whenever I pass our little ward,
I like to linger for a visit,
So that when I am carried in
The Lord won’t say, Who is it?”
Who Wrote These?
We don't always know. Looks like both of these are folk proverbs or anonymous verses with no attribution whatsoever.
Not that that's a bad thing - how many anonymous works are floating around out there in the world? Quite a few.
They sound like something you might hear in the Book of Proverbs - wisdom passed down through an oral tradition until someone thought to record it.
Did you know that some people go to college to study proverbs in particular? They're called paremiologists. I'm sure they're lots of fun at parties. Maybe.
A Moment for Church
I realize that some may see this post and call it poor taste to post this, so close to such a disaster as we've experienced this week. I do apologize if anyone felt this way. But I felt something needed to be said in defense of going to church.
Despite the news and everything that's going on right now, I'm still going to church. Nor am I bringing a gun to church after this, even though I am licensed to carry one and fully able to wield one.
There might be a taser or some wasp spray in my grandma church bag. Not against fighting back in nonlethal ways, but I'm leaving the gun-wielding to the off-duty police officers and military members that are sprinkled here and there throughout our congregations. You can bet they'll be carrying, and I'm glad they are.
Others may feel different, and that's okay. I feel that there's a good reason for going. Going to church is something I need - something I went without during COVID for nearly two years, and I missed it badly.
Sure, people can be annoying. And there's lots of people at church - way more than is comfortable for an introvert such as I sometimes. But when I see them, and we smile and hug (some of the people I hug are so alone that church is the only place they get any sort of human contact) - it's important.
It's a place where I can go and be taught by the Lord through His spirit, and where I can be around people who are trying to follow Jesus Christ. It's where I can hopefully do some good for others. Yes, we're all failing to live up to His mighty example, but we're sure blessed for trying.
We in our faith like to call ourselves children of God, and I think of that in a literal sense - God is the literal father of my spirit. While I'm middle-aged in mortality, I'm little more than a toddler in my spirit. Church is one of the places where my Father holds my hand and helps me learn to walk better. No one is taking that away from me with a mere gun.
It's so important to me that it's worth risking my life to go, and it's hard to believe that I live in a world now where I have to make that choice.
But I do, and I am.
And because I go, the world is a little less evil each week than it could have been.
If we all stop going to church - whatever church we go to - who wins? The question of whether evil is real has already been clearly answered, this weekend and hundreds of times over.
But if evil is real, doesn't it make sense that love and light - that God - is also? And if we all go to church - whatever church we go to - then we're all too busy to shoot each other, and the world gets that much less evil?
I love my Savior Jesus Christ, and He commands that I go to church. I've learned to trust Him and do what He says, and if I die doing what He says, what have I lost really?
My life?
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it:
and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
- Matthew 16:25-26
I found God at church.
I hope He'll always find me there.
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