040225, Wednesday

Daily Vitals: Weight: 227.9, GMI: 6.8, Steps (previous day) 11,639

Journal Entry

Served in the temple then we went to the Good Food store in  SLC to pick up Cathy's order for gluten friendly bread and rolls. Everything they make in that store is gluten -free.

Come Follow Me 

D&C 29:39 And it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet.

The Fall was not a disaster. It wasn’t a mistake or an accident. It was a deliberate part of the plan of salvation. We are God’s spirit “offspring,” sent to earth “innocent”  of Adam’s transgression. Yet our Father’s plan subjects us to temptation and misery in this fallen world as the price to comprehend authentic joy. Without tasting the bitter, we actually cannot understand the sweet.  We require mortality’s discipline and refinement as the “next step in [our] development” toward becoming like our Father.  But growth means growing pains. It also means learning from our mistakes in a continual process made possible by the Savior’s grace, which He extends both during and “after all we can do."

 Elder Bruce C. Hafen of The Seventy, April 2004 

Many years ago, I took the Scouts on a campout in the desert. The boys slept by a large fire they had made, and like every good Scout leader, I slept in the back of my truck. In the morning when I sat up and looked at the campsite, I saw one Scout, whom I will call Paul, who looked particularly rough around the edges. I asked how he had slept, and he replied, “Not very well.”

When I asked why, he said, “I was cold; the fire went out.”

I answered, “Well, fires do that. Wasn’t your sleeping bag warm enough?”

No answer.

Then one of the other Scouts loudly volunteered, “He didn’t use his sleeping bag.”

I asked in disbelief, “Why not, Paul?”

Silence—then finally the sheepish reply: “Well, I thought if I didn’t unroll my sleeping bag, I wouldn’t have to roll it up again.”

True story: he froze for hours because he was trying to save five minutes of work. We may think, “How foolish! Who would ever do that?” Well, we do it all the time in much more dangerous ways. We are, in effect, refusing to unroll our spiritual sleeping bags when we don’t take the time to sincerely pray, study, and earnestly live the gospel each day; not only will the fire go out, but we will be unprotected and grow spiritually cold.

When we are complacent with our covenants, we are complicit with the consequences. The Lord has counseled us “to beware concerning yourselves, to give diligent heed to the words of eternal life.” And He further declared, “My blood shall not cleanse them if they hear me not.”

Of the Seventy

Elder Bruce C. HafenE