No Coincidences

Tag: god

  • -ites: Politics

    -ites: Politics

    4 Nephi 1:16-17

    16 And there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.

    17 There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.

    After Christ came and established peace in the land, we have the above account from 4 Nephi in the Book of Mormon.  Before Christ came there had been many contentions – different denominations, different groups and sects.  Sound familiar?

    The world we live in today is full of envyings, strifes, tumults, whoredoms, lyings, murders, and all manner of lasciviousness.  We are separated into so many groups of -ites.

    Let’s take a look at a few of the categories we separate ourselves into:

    • Poor, middle, upper class
    • Educated and uneducated.
    • Religious and non religious
    • Asian, American, African, Hispanic, European, Russian, etc.

    Believers in Christ separate themselves:

    • Catholic
    • Baptist
    • Lutheran
    • Latter-day Saint
    • Non-denomination

    Even Latter-day Saints have their separations:

    • Member and nonmember
    • Return missionary and non-return missionary
    • Convert and pioneer heritage

    Factions and divisions are prevalent no matter how small a group is broken down into in society. Sometimes it feels like if two people were put in a room they would only find things to disagree on. I list all these groups and ways we separate ourselves to lead to a point. One of the most polarizing groups we separate ourselves into, especially in America, is our political party.

    The political landscape today is full of so much vitriol, so much animosity. Sometimes I fear our politics is what will be the ultimate downfall of all unity and kindness in the United States. There are other times I’m positive political beliefs will be the end of all love in the world.

    This post does a great job in describing the major issue with politics today:

    https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/49040923/posts/48634

    Please give it a read. The post talks about how in politics we often hate the other side more than we care about our own side.

    Democrats and Republicans are the modern-day Nephites and Lamanites.  They are titles, distinctions, parties.  All they do is separate us from one another.  As soon as we look at somebody as a Republican or a Democrat and assume something negative about them, we are unfairly characterizing that individual.  Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you know someone of the other party that you like.  If only we could see the viewpoints of other parties and understand the reason they think that way, it would make such a difference.

    All these categories described above, and especially political affiliation, they are all modern day -ites.  If we don’t start uniting and working together, this will all fall apart.

    As we approach another heated political season, I hope we all remember that we’re in this together. The Republican isn’t all that different from their Democrat neighbor. Love and accept and try to see why others have different viewpoints. Often when we put ourselves in the shoes of another and try to understand why they think the way they think, we will be shocked at how quickly we at least understand where they’re coming from.

    There are so many ways we differentiate ourselves. I hope we can do our best to focus on the one category we all belong to: children of our Heavenly Father. We are brothers and sisters, all in this test of life together. I hope we can start to act like it.

    Just imagine. What if the politics in America was better represented by this image than the one above?

    That’s a political landscape I’d like to be a part of.

  • An Angel

    An Angel

    Some of God’s children are special beyond measure.

    They never lose their innocence and childlike wonder.

    I have a cousin who is like that.

    She taught me a lot.

    She has taught me about true joy.  She has taught me about true happiness.

    The simple things in life would bring such a laugh.

    The kind of laugh you couldn’t avoid.

    The kind of laugh that made you laugh, I guess because her joy was so contagious, so infectious.

    Olivia and her bike

    I had to laugh with her.

    God’s plan is perfect. 

    Despite a loving family, loving parents and siblings, there was never a perfect place on this earth for her.

    I’m not sure she ever had a comfortable moment on this earth.

    Despite that, still the joy, the joy was ever present.

    A new dress.  A butterfly.  A rad motorcycle.

    She could teach us so much.

    There was never a perfect place for her on this earth.

    I know when I next see her, she will be clothed with such beauty and glory that I will be blinded by her.

    But God’s plan is perfect.

    I know there is a perfect place for her with Him.

    If you looked very closely you could see her glory here.

    I know there is a perfect place for her.

    I’ve never been around a soul who deserved a perfect place more.

    I’m thankful for what she has taught me.  I’m grateful for her strength.  I’m grateful for her fight to stay here and teach us.

    I know her family is grieving now.  We all are.  We grieve when someone so good is taken from us.

    Take comfort in where she’s gone.

    No place was good enough for her here.  She’s finally in a place deserving of her light.

    We will miss her.

    Enjoy paradise Olivia. You are a princess every day and I can’t wait to see you again.

  • My Coincidences

    My Coincidences

    Have you ever noticed how easily we forget?  It’s a cliché statement on human nature – “humans have short memories,” but It’s so true.  Have you ever walked into work on Monday and been asked what you did over the weekend… and not be able to think of anything?  Sometimes it takes me 5-10 minutes to think of what I did 1 and 2 DAYS ago, never mind years. 

    Soon after I came back to church, I started keeping track of “coincidences” that I experienced.  It was my way of taking note of God’s daily influence in my life.  It’s a list of those answered prayers, small moments that seemed significant, things just working out.  I keep this list so I never forget God’s hand in my daily life.  I’ll fluctuate in how good I am at keeping the list.  Sometimes I’ll go weeks or months without adding anything.

    If I’m going to name my blog nocoincidences I gotta back it up with some data.

    My entries go back to 2016.  Four years of “coincidences.”  101 total entries.

    I’ve found it extremely helpful to look back on and remember how blessed I’ve been.  Even when things are hard, God is there.  I would recommend this practice to anyone. 

    My experiences vary from something I study before church being mentioned that day in someone’s talk, that always makes me pay attention; to the postcard I received the day I was wondering where to go to church.  There are tons of small moments that can become big moments.

    Reading back through them I realize most of them I can’t explain.  It was something I felt or something only I could appreciate.  Kind of like faith.  Even if you’re explaining faith to someone else with faith, your experience with faith will always be unique.  My “coincidences” as I call them are mine, and extremely personal. 

    One thing I notice as I read through these notes is even today, I don’t know the significance.  That night I felt a weird feeling as I was going to bed and decided to check the kitchen only to notice I left the oven on.  Was the house going to burn down?  I don’t know.  What I do know is the feeling I had to go back to the kitchen was distinct, and obvious.  God knows what would have happened, that’s enough for me. 

    There are many moments at work.  Moments of frustration, anxiety, worry.  Then I pray and it somehow works out.  The answer I’ve been staring at jumps out at me, someone calls and helps, I’m given more time, a boss shows sympathy.  These blessings come in many ways.  If I’m not looking for them, I would miss them every time. 

    Look for the blessings in your life.  If you don’t look for them it’s easy to feel alone or like things never work out.  Write down all the blessings in your life, everything you’re grateful for.  Look at all the moments that just work out and realize you’re being watched.  Look at all your “coincidences” and appreciate them. I have 101 coincidences I’ve written down in 4 years.  101.  It will be so amazing to one day stand before my Father in Heaven.  He will laugh jovially at my 101 remembrances and He will open my Book of Life and show me the countless, infinite times His hand was with me.  That will be a good day.

  • Seer Stones

    Seer Stones

    Imagine giving someone a spyglass in the year 600.  A spyglass is the refracting telescope you picture pirates using on the open sea before finding their target.  The sinister pirate stands on deck, extends the spyglass to its full length, looks through one small hole and sees what his own two eyes could barely make out on their own.  A ship.  Ripe for plunder.  The spyglass wouldn’t be officially invented for 1000 years, in 1608 by most accounts.

    Imagine giving that to someone in the year 600.  They would be amazed; it would be such a phenomenon to them.  Another example is the microscope, also invented around 1600, but perfected over the next 400 years to what we have now.  That would blow someone’s socks off in the year 600.

    The James Webb Space Telescope is replacing the Hubble Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope known to man.  Imagine showing that to someone in 1830.  There’s a good chance they wouldn’t believe their eyes.  There’s a good chance the people from these times would consider what they’re being shown witchcraft or sorcery.  If you showed someone a modern-day microscope found in every high school science class and told them you could see the cells of a plant they might put you to the stake for burning i.e. Salem Witch Trials.

    The James Webb Space Telescope is described:

    “will provide improved infrared resolution and sensitivity over Hubble, and will enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology, including observing some of the most distant events and objects in the universe, such as the formation of the first galaxies.”

    I don’t know what all that even means, and I’m here, in the year 2020.  The word “events” seems to imply that this telescope will be powerful enough to literally look so far away that we’re seeing the past.  I won’t get anymore into the science of telescopes and microscopes because I didn’t pay enough attention in my science class to give accurate information about that.

    My point is this: if in history you showed someone a device that wouldn’t exist for 1000 years, they might not believe it, or they’d think it was some sort of magic.  That is exactly how people reacted in 1830 when Joseph Smith talked about seer stones.  Miraculously, it’s how people react today to the idea of Joseph Smith using seer stones.

    The natural eyes of Joseph Smith were seeing revelation and things of the spiritual realm just like we look through a telescope and see things that we previously could not.  God-fearing people everywhere believe in heaven and hell, God and angels, and yet can’t accept a prophet of God seeing things we don’t.  The concept of a stone being the medium should not be a stumbling block.  Who in the year 600 would have thought glass would be the medium with which we look into the cosmos? 

    Our nature today is to be so skeptical of anything of a spiritual nature.  If you stop and look at it in a logical sense, the principle is sound, the logic is there.  The same people today who hold a cell phone, press an icon on a screen, type in a statement, and suddenly have billions of results, scoff at the idea of a stone that helps translate ancient scripture.  How crazy is that?  99% of people today don’t understand internet, email, or electricity yet use it every single day.  To be clear, I don’t understand how most of those things work, I don’t understand the intricacies involved.  I don’t have to understand, I see it in front of me, whether I understand it or not, the proof is there.  It exists.

    Seer stones are not cooky, bizarre, unprecedented technology.  They are a different kind of telescope.  When Joseph Smith looked into them, he saw, through revelation and the power of God, things he couldn’t see with his natural eyes.  A person in 1830 couldn’t comprehend a mobile phone. Many today refuse to comprehend the thought of a seer stone.  It doesn’t mean seer stones didn’t exist.  There’s so much we don’t understand, and we are marveled by technology daily.  Is it that difficult to think God had a device that would allow man to do extraordinary things long before the mobile phone?

    I know that seer stones exist, just like cell phones.  I know that Joseph Smith used them to translate an ancient record.  The Book of Mormon wasn’t written by a natural man.  It was translated through the medium of a seer stone, provided by God.  All of us here in the year 2020 who don’t understand how the very phones we hold provide all the miracles they do, how can we be so skeptical?

    ______________

    For anyone who would like to learn more about seer stones the link below is a great resource and watch this short video:

    https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/seer-stones?lang=eng

  • Light You Reflect

    Light You Reflect

    Alexandros Papaderos

    In a book titled It Was on Fire When I Lay on It by Robert Fulghum, he tells a story about when he asked Alexandros Papaderos the question, “what is the meaning of life?”

    Robert Fulghum relates that Dr. Papaderos pulled a small round mirror out of his wallet.  He said he had found the mirror and scratched it on a stone until it was round.

    Dr. Papaderos said, “I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine-in deep holes and crevices and dark closets.  It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find… As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life.  I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light.  But light-truth, understanding, knowledge-is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.

    “I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know.  Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world-into the black places in the hearts of men-and change some things in some people.  Perhaps others may see and do likewise.  This is what I am about.  This is the meaning of my life.”

    Doctrine & Covenants 45:7

    “For verily I say unto you that I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the light and the life of the world-a light that shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.”

    The mirror found by Dr. Papaderos was not rounded and clean when he found it.  It took scratching it on a stone.  This symbolizes the refining process Dr. Papaderos undoubtedly went through to become a source that could reflect light.  We are born with the light of Christ.  When you look upon a young child you easily see that light.  As we grow the light we reflect dims, or it brightens.  It is our effort that determines this.

    Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are blessed to know by what source we can reflect light.  We reflect the light of Jesus Christ.  He is the light.  We can all be the reflection. We are made in the design and shape of our Heavenly Father, made in His image.  The source of all light.