Important—though unperceived—Sabbath blessings

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the October 1984 Conference.

I always like Elder John H. Groberg's talks. I recognized one of the stories from this one, so either I heard it somewhere else or it made an impression on me even as a four-year-old! (I bet I read it in his book.) Anyway, one thing I loved was how he speaks of commandments. If you were asked the question "Why does God give commandments," what would you answer? I wouldn't have thought of putting it this way, but it's beautiful:

…He gives us commandments so he can bless us as we keep them and thereby have joy.

Elder Groberg's talk is about the specific commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy, which is obviously an emphasis we've had in the church forever, but I feel like I personally really re-committed to the principle about 6 years ago, when Sam was the Gospel Doctrine teacher and gave a really good lesson on it. Then there was President Nelson's talk in 2015. That made me wonder what was so central about Sabbath Day observance, to make President Nelson emphasize it when there was so much else wrong with the world. And I guess I've been growing in the principle ever since—and the Sabbath has become more and more of a delight to me. It's pretty amazing to look back and see how that weekly respite has grown in importance in my life.

So it's interesting, in that context, to look back to this 1984 talk and see that there's nothing new about the counsel—but also to feel how relevant and urgent it comes across to me today:

Does the Lord love and bless those who keep the Sabbath day holy? I testify that he does in eternally meaningful ways. I further testify that when we eventually see things through the proper perspective of eternal truth, we will be amazed at how much we were blessed in important—though often unperceived—ways through keeping the Sabbath holy; and to our sorrow we may sense how many blessings we kept from ourselves by not consistently keeping the Sabbath day holy.

I still have a long way to go in fully hallowing the Sabbath. It often feels like the children are at their very worst on Sundays—and we all know that Sundays can be long and busy days. It's pretty obvious that the "day of rest" is supposed to be more about resting from a specific sort of weariness than it is resting from everything. But I'm consistently grateful for that specific rest. Rest from the online world, rest from the weekday routine, rest from making certain choices. To take up my "Sunday burdens" and lay aside my other ones is a particularly refreshing type of rest, and it's one that's becoming more and more meaningful to me. I'm so curious to know which other blessings I'm being given that are directly tied to the Sabbath day without me knowing it! And it makes me want to do even better so that I can access even more of those readily-available blessings from the Lord.


Other posts in this series:

Growing in grace on the Sabbath Day—by G
Are we really living the gospel of Jesus Christ?—by Jan Tolman

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Hunts, Haircuts, Hammocks

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• Daisy was proud of her four scrapes with bandaids.  • I love Teddy's bunny drawings so much. Every paper in the house is covered with them.  • Daisy and Junie grew pea plants as part of our botany unit and they were wildly successful. Successful enough for them to pick 5 or 6 pea pods every few days, anyway. They tasted so sweet and good! 

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Sebastian did his Eagle Scout project! When the church announced the changes in Scouting, I was not at all sure Seb would want to push ahead to Eagle Scout. But he said he did! He has a few more merit badges to finish, but getting the Eagle Project done is a huge accomplishment. He did a project for the community association—planting a native plant garden near the community center. One of the master gardeners helped him choose and place the plants, but he was in charge of pulling out the old plants, tilling the ground, putting in new soil, and planting everything. (Seb loves stuff like this: last summer he re-did all the dripline and irrigation in the garden beds at our house and it was AWESOME. So this project was really perfect for him.)

We were afraid that he wouldn't have enough other Scouts come help with the project, but Abe and Malachi and Daisy and Junie and Sam all went to help, and then a bunch of Scouts showed up too, bless them, so it worked out well in the end. It was a crazy day for us with our nephew's wedding as well, so Sam and I couldn't even be there the whole time, but Seb and the scouts did a wonderful job. It was so cool to watch Seb taking charge and getting it accomplished!

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Two recent fun Family Home Evenings: doing a treasure hunt Abe made for us by the lake, and putting together a puzzle. [Word to the wise: don't do a puzzle on a lazy susan. Everyone will fight over which way to turn it.]

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The girls got such cute short summer haircuts. But the Sunday before that, they had me put curlers in their hair… "for the last time!" Ha ha. Of course I love their curls, but I also love their little pixies! And they're so easy!

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Ziggy loooooves so much to be read to. He is, I'm sorry to say, a bit tyrannical about it. Lucky for him, when one of us gets tired of his plaintive "Eeed it? Eeed da gook?", there is usually another victim nearby. No one can resist him for long! We always think if we read him a WHOLE BUNCH of books then he will finally be happy. But when we finally have to stop, he seems just as mad as if we'd never read him anything! Hmmph! But his utter delight while the reading is happening makes it all worthwhile.

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Pretty moon. Pretty temple. Pretty temple. (That last picture is verrry early in the morning, before they have turned all the temple lights on. It makes such an interesting ghostly outline!)

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• Zig doing something he loves to do: push large things noisily around the kitchen floor.  • Bathy people.  • Ziggy and his friend Nutmeg.

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We had our traditional "Longest Day of the Year" party on my brother's birthday. We went to the Hammock Park with a picnic and it was just lovely. Kind of chilly, surprisingly! Sam went back home for blankets and jackets as the sun got low. But it was so nice to be outside, swinging gently and quietly in the evening air. (I use the term "quietly" in a relative, not an absolute, manner, you understand.)

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People bore uncanny resemblances to peas. In pods.

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These last two pictures are of the day's two twilights: evening and morning. A beautiful day from start to finish. But, lest it all seem too idyllic, I must confess that the day ended with this:

Not an unusual end to a day, really. And…not the worst possible one. :)

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All wisdom is from God

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 1984 Conference.

As I try to teach the principles of the gospel to my children, I often think about how simple the concepts are—counterintuitive, sometimes, but still simple. Even my youngest children seem to grasp naturally that when we trust God, it is easier to follow him; or why it would be good to treat others like we want to be treated. (Actually DOING this, obviously, takes more effort.) But I also like this perspective from Elder Royden G. Derrick:

In my limited experience in the fields of religion and education, it has been my observation that it takes as much intelligence for one to assimilate the principles of the gospel as it does for one to understand the complicated formulas of science. An understanding of the gospel is a quest and must be pursued through study, thought, and prayer.

There is so much substance to these simple principles. You can think you understand them. Then you can think you really understand them. Then you can see that you didn't truly understand them fully, but NOW you are finally starting to understand them. And after several cycles of this you start to realize just how far you have to go before you really understand anything! :) Sometimes when I'm in one of these "valleys" where I feel like I'm starting over, I feel discouraged about how inadequate my previous and current understanding is. That's why I liked this quote: it reminds me that gospel learning is not intended to be an easy or temporary process. We are no more expected to master it quickly than we would be expected to understand quantum mechanics after only a few years of study. But, I also like the reassurance that if we put in that "study, thought, and prayer," we will "assimilate the principles of the gospel" someday!

And along those lines I liked his further quote from Brigham Young:

Brigham Young taught: “All true wisdom that mankind have they have received from God, whether they know it or not. There is no ingenious mind that has ever invented anything beneficial to the human family but what he obtained it from that One Source. … There is only one source from whence men obtain wisdom, and that is God, the fountain of all wisdom; and though men may claim to make their discoveries by their own wisdom, by meditation and reflection, they are indebted to our Father in Heaven for all.” (Journal of Discourses, 13:148.)

It reminds me of this experience where I received spiritual help with practicing the piano and realized how Heavenly Father is the best at…everything. So he can help us with everything! It sounds kind of funny to say it this way, but I've been thinking this week about how God's expertise can even help give me guidance in something as mundane as toilet training Ziggy. And it does and He has! "We are indebted to our Father in Heaven FOR ALL."

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St. George: In Which I Inadvertently Herd Some Cows

I said the waterfalls were my favorite thing about this trip, but I think maybe the house we stayed at was actually my favorite. Maybe it's because even though I love traveling, I also just like being at home. And staying at a rental house is like being home…but a more interesting, more exciting home than our usual home. The picture above is looking over the road down into Gunlock. So remote and beautiful!

I wasn't sure how it would be staying so far away from St. George (we were 35-40 minutes away, I think). There are a zillion rentals closer to town; condos, even some with pools…but they all look the same and you know I always like staying somewhere with a yard…and places to explore…and somewhere for the kids to play…. Anyway, we settled on this place and it was even BETTER than I anticipated.

Here is one of the cinder cones in Veyo, which is the neighboring town to Gunlock. This is not the one we hiked up. We called this one "ours" because we could see it from our house.

A number of entries in the guest book mentioned how "surprisingly good" the pie shop in Veyo (one of about…oh…five? businesses in that tiny town) was. We tried the pies and agreed! The one on the left is a "Veyo volcano" pie with chocolate and caramel layers. Super yummy. And the one on the right was even better—sour cream lemon! I love a good sour cream lemon pie.

The house itself is on a huge ranch. We met the owners and they are SUPER NICE. They said we could wander anywhere we wanted as long as we closed the gates behind us so no cows would get out! 

The boys put up their hammocks on the porch.

There were so many animals! The children were in heaven, especially Ziggy, who is very big on making animal sounds these days. We saw—let's see—cows, horses, dogs, bats, bunnies, frogs, lizards, wild turkeys, and lots of birds.

There was a baby horse too.

This tiny frog (and his two friends) made little chirpy croaking sounds in a little pond outside our bedroom door every night. We loved it! You can't see just how tiny he is. He was only as big as a beetle! I didn't even know frogs could BE that tiny! The ones we have at home in our lake are big, and make low humming croaking noises very different from this guy's cute croaks.

This sort of shows his size. As big as a thumbnail! Or smaller!

There was a stream running through the property, with those dramatic lava-black cliffs behind. SO beautiful. And the stars at night!! I couldn't IMAGINE there possibly being as many stars as I remembered, once we were back home again.

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