111524, Friday

Daily Vitals: Weight: 224.6, GMI: 7.0 Steps (previous day) 10,115

Journal Entry

Cathy is still suffering from a bad sore throat. Her temperature is fairly normal. We went to the hospital last night and she was tested but nothing was found. No strep throat, etc. And we got a covid test kit from Walgreens and it came up negative. She's going to see Dr Welch this morning at 1130 and he will decide what, if anything, he might communicate to the surgeon in Florida re this Monday's surgical procedure. I'm optimistically thinking we'll be able to go ahead but we'll see.

Nothing else on my plate today.

Come Follow Me 

Ether 3:14 Behold, I am he who was prepared from the foundation of the world to redeem my people. Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son. In me shall all mankind have life, and that eternally, even they who shall believe on my name; and they shall become my sons and my daughters. 15 And never have I showed myself unto man whom I have created, for never has man believed in me as thou hast. 

“Seest thou that ye are created after mine own image? Yea, even all men were created in the beginning after mine own image.

 16 Behold, this body, which ye now behold, is the body of my spirit; and man have I created after the body of my spirit; and even as I appear unto thee to be in the spirit will I appear unto my people in the flesh.”

"He was chosen and foreordained in the Grand Council in Heaven, even before the world was formed. Furthermore, being born of a mortal mother, He inherited the physical death, but from God, as the Only Begotten Son of the Father, He inherited the power to lay down His own life and then to take it up again. Additionally, Christ lived a perfect life that was without blemish and, therefore, was exempt from the demands of divine justice."

Elder Ulisses Soares Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, April 2021

I think that what Elder Soares is saying is not so much that Christ was "exempt" from the demands of divine justice but that his way of living caused divine justice, though always present, to not adversely affect him.

From the ScripturePlus app we read:

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland wrote,

“Part of the reason we are so misunderstood by others in the Christian tradition is because in stressing the individual personages of the Godhead, we have not followed that up often enough by both conceding and insisting upon Their unity in virtually every other imaginable way. For this we have reaped needless criticism, and we have made our LDS position harder to be understood than it needs to be.” (Ensign, January 2016).

So maybe in addition to remembering that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are distinct personages we can more fully recognize their unity. When Jesus Christ visited his followers in the western hemisphere he taught, “the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost are one.” (3 Nephi 11:36). As Christ later knelt in prayer with these believers he said, “Father, I pray unto thee for them, and also for all those who shall believe on their words, that they may believe in me, that I may be in them as thou, Father, art in me, that we may be one” (3 Nephi 19:23).

There’s something powerful here. Christ wants us to be unified with him and our Heavenly Father in the same way that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are unified. Maybe as we learn more about how Heavenly Father is in Christ and Christ is in Heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit will whisper to our hearts how we can invite Christ to be in us in the same way that the Father is in him.

Jesus said that he always did his Father’s will. This is one key way he is one with the Father.  Jesus taught, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” (John 5:19). We can be one with God when we choose to do what he would do.

When Jesus Christ prayed just before entering Gethsemane he prayed for those who believe in him, saying, “[I pray] that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:21–22). I hope that we will come to better understand that unity of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and that we will become one with them.