Infinite Power of Hope

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a series of videos on YouTube called 'Mormon Messages,' some of which are taken from talks given at General Conference.  I'm posting a link to the latest one as it expands beautifully on my last post on hope.

The blurb on YouTube:

"Dieter F. Uchtdorf, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, shares how hope encourages and inspires us to place our trust in the loving care of our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ."

 (Okay, so I worked out how to embed a video, but now... I've looked but can't find how to change the template so the video doesn't overlap the side bar widgets.  This is the smallest size video link I could get on YouTube.  Any ideas?)

A Perfect Brightness of Hope

In Sacrament Meeting yesterday, my bishop spoke about hope and the way in which many of us feel or express hope in Christ, as being without real hope.  A hopeless hope.  Not a faithful hope which trusts that all the trials we may face are ultimately for our benefit (see Doctrine & Covenants 122:7).  Too often our hope is similar to a wish for something we're not certain we'll receive, such as when we say, "I hope we'll have good weather tomorrow."  There's nothing you can do about the outcome of such a wish and so we fall short of true hope.  Our hope is vain (see Moroni 7:40-44) when it should be strong - we are counselled to "ask in faith, nothing wavering" (see James 1:5-6).

So how do we learn to hope with a trusting heart?  For me, I'm learning that there are two ways - and that they go hand-in-hand.  First and foremost is to do your best to keep the commandments of God and follow the example of Jesus Christ.  Which leads naturally to the second: to serve others.  These two actions were nicely summed up on a bumper sticker I saw the other day: "Love God, Love Others."

When we begin to look at the world around us and do what we can to make it a better place and ourselves more caring people, when we have faith that Jesus Christ will make up the difference between His perfection and our shortcomings - and we all have them - that is when we will begin to understand what it means to have "a perfect brightness of hope" (see 2 Nephi 31:20).

So This Is Christmas

Fourteen years in the USA and I'm still not used to cold at this time of year.  So if I'm going to feel misplaced, I might as well spend a few days with friends in their north Georgia cabin.  And anyhow, it's always interesting to sit around a bonfire and witness a true pyromaniac at work.

Earlier in the evening Pyro's wife was trying to get their two year old girl to have "two more bites" of dinner.  Nothing was working, not the promise of chips, cookies, or even Grandpa's soda was working.  Not until Grandma decided she was going outside to see the campfire Daddy had built.  Open Sesame!  Never has a two year old scarfed down two mouthfuls of green bean casserole more quickly.  No sooner than she'd finished and run off to put on her boots, when Daddy came in from the cold and announced he was done with the campfire.

Oops.  And being a safety-conscious pyromaniac, he'd doused the fire with enough water to make a fireman proud.  What's a mum to do?  If you're going to bribe your kid you have to come up with the promised goods.  PyroDad was running through the options (and opportunities) for making a roaring bonfire at a moment's notice.  Grandma to the rescue yet again (she's good, folks) with a starter log, or as she calls it: a cheater log.  Pyro, back in the zone again, quickly set about establishing a fire worthy of heating a iron bar to a glow-in-the-dark Yuletide red.  Which of course led to joyfully discovering how easily and quickly a red hot poker will burn through solid objects.