Daily Thought

Achieving the Miraculous

"When we strive with faith nothing wavering to fulfill the duties appointed to us, when we seek the inspiration of the Almighty in the performance of our responsibilities, we can achieve the miraculous.

President Thomas S. Monson - Daughters in The Kingdom p. 91

Daily Scripture

And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.
D&C 84:88

Daily Thought

Ether 11-15 Diane Adair - February 21, 2012

Quotes for Ether 11- 15

Diane Adair

We live in a world of uncertainty…disappointment…rejoicing…good health…sickness…sorrow, we do not know.  But one thing we do know…regardless of what the future holds there stands the Redeemer of the world, the Son of God, certain and sure as the anchor of our lives.  He is the rock of our salvation our strength, our comfort, the very focus of our Faith." 
                     President Gordon B. Hinckley


"When we reject the counsel that comes from God we do not choose to be independent of outside influences but we reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all powerful, all knowing Father in Heaven whose soul purpose and that of His Beloved Son is to give us Eternal life to give us all that He has and to bring us home again in families in the arms of His love.  In rejecting His counsel we choose the direction of another whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred, we have moral agency as a gift of God.  Rather than a right to choose to be free of influence it is the unalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever power we choose."
                     Henry B. Eyring

If there is one thing you and I need in this world, it is faith.  The kind of faith that moves one to get on his knees and plead with the Lord and then get on his feet and go to work--is an asset beyond compare.
                     President Gordon B. Hinckley

"Some trials of our faith are simply a matter of exercising our faith…Every time you try your faith, that is, act in worthiness on an impression you will receive the confirming evidence of the Spirit.  Those feelings will fortify your faith.  As you repeat that pattern your faith will become stronger."
                     Richard G. Scott


"Most of us seem to have pride cycle as part of our character.  There is a point when we are humble and teachable…we grow and ride crest of spirituality…other times we feel self sufficient and puffed up in pride…How much better if we kept in remembrance our God and break cycle…humbled by the word of the Lord and strong enough in spirit to remember our God in whatsoever circumstances we find ourselves in."
                     Carlos Asay

"A friend of mine recently wrote to me, confiding that he was having a difficult time keeping his testimony strong and vibrant. He asked for counsel.

I wrote back to him and lovingly suggested a few specific things he could do that would align his life more closely with the teachings of the restored gospel. To my surprise, I heard back from him only a week later. The essence of his letter was this: “I tried what you suggested. It didn’t work. What else have you got?”

Brothers and sisters, we have to stay with it. We don’t acquire eternal life in a sprint—this is a race of endurance. We have to apply and reapply the divine gospel principles. Day after day we need to make them part of our normal life.

Discipleship is a journey…to craft our character and purify our hearts.  It is not enough merely to speak of Jesus Christ or proclaim that we are His disciples.  Discipleship is not a spectator sport."
                               President Dieter F. Uchtdorf


Ether 11-15 -Diane Adair - February 21, 2012(Audio)

Daily Scripture

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.
Ether 12:27

Daily Thought

"I stress. . . the deep need each women has to study the scriptures.  We want our homes to be blesses with sister scriptorians - whether you are single or married, young or old, widowed or living in a family.

  Regardless of your particular circumstances, as you become more and more familiar with the truths of the scriptures, you will be more and more effective in keeping the second great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself.  Become scholars of the scriptures - not to put others down, but to lift them up!
After all, who has any greater need to 'treasure up' the truths of the gospel (on which they may call in their moments of need) than do women and mothers who do so much nurturing and teaching?"
President Spencer W. Kimball - Daughters in My Kingdom, p. 50

Daily Scripture

"...and they are brought to sing redeeming love...Therefore, let us glory, yea, we will glory in the Lord; yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full yea, we will praise our God forever. Behold, who can glory too much in the Lord? Yea, who can say too much of his great power, and of his mercy, and of his long-suffering towards the children of men? Behold, I say unto, I cannot say the smallest part which I feel."
 - Alma 26: 13,16

Daily Thought

"Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don't judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet.  Charity is accepting someone's differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn't handle something the way we might have hoped.  Charity is refusing to take advantage of another's weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us.  Charity is expecting the best of each other."
 Elder Marvin J. Ashton

Ether 6-10 February 14, 2012 - Nancy Baird

QUOTES FOR ETHER 6-10
Nancy Baird

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us."
                Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Speech, 1994


"The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash wove a wonderful tale about a kind of primordial, otherworldly light that came into being in response to God's first command, and that continued to trace its way through the history of the world...One version of the legend imagines that God placed a bit of this primordial light in a jewel [Hebrew: tsohar] God gave to Adam and Eve, who passed it down through the generations to Noah (who used it to light the ark), and eventually to Abraham, then Moses, to the desert sanctuary...to the Temple itself."
    Rabbi Amy Eilberg, "Noah: Finding light in shadow of darkness," Jewish Weekly, Oct  18, 1996.

  
"On May 27, 1992, in Sarajevo, one of the few bakeries that still had a supply of flour was making and distributing bread to the starving, war-shattered people.  At 4 p.m. a long line stretched into the street.  Suddenly, a mortar shell fell directly into the middle of the line, killing 22 people and splattering flesh, blood, bone and rubble.

 Not far away lived a 35-year-old musician named Vedran Smailovic.  Before the war he had been a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera, a distinguished career to which he patiently longed to return.  But when he saw the carnage from the massacre outside his window, he was pushed past his capacity to absorb and endure any more.  Anguished, he resolved to do the thing he did best:  make music.  Public music, daring music, music on a battlefield.

 "For each of the next 22 days, at 4 p.m., Smailovic put on his full, formal concert attire, took up his cello and walked out of his apartment into the midst of the battle raging around him.  Placing a plastic chair beside the crater that the shell had made, he played in memory of the dead, Albinoni's Adagio in G minor, one of the most mournful and haunting pieces in the classical repertoire.  He played to the abandoned streets, smashed trucks and burning buildings, and to the terrified people who hid in the cellars while the bombs dropped and bullets flew.  With masonry exploding around him, he made his unimaginable courageous stand for human dignity, for those lost to war, for civilization, for compassion and for peace.  Though the shellings went on, he was never hurt."
              
                                         Paul Sullivan, "The Cellist of Sarajevo," Hope, March/April, 1996.

SCRIPTURES

Ecclesiastes 1:9    "There is no new thing under the sun."

Genesis 6:16    "A window shalt thou make to the ark..."

D&C 88:12    "Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space--"

Ether 6-10 - Nancy Baird - February 14, 2012(Audio)

Daily Thought & Scripture

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

John 15:12

Daily Thought

“There is a golden thread that runs through every account of faith from the beginning of the world to the present time. Abraham, Noah, the brother of Jared, the Prophet Joseph Smith, and countless others wanted to be obedient to the will of God. They had ears that could hear, eyes that could see, and hearts that could know and feel. They never doubted. They trusted. Through personal prayer, through family prayer, by trusting in God with faith, nothing wavering, we can call down to our rescue His mighty power. His call to us is as it has ever been: “Come unto me.”
 - President Thomas S. Monson

Ether 1-6 Diane Adair - February 7, 2012

Quotes For Ether 1-6

Diane Adair

" Do you offer a few trite words and worn out phrases, or do you talk intimately to the Lord?  Do you pray occasionally when you should be praying regularly, often, consistently? When you speak do you also listen? "
 - Spencer W. Kimball, New Era - March, 1978 p.17


"Pray as if everything depended upon the Lord, work as if everything depends on you."
 - Gordon B. Hinckley

"Most of the time there are no flags waving or bands playing when prayers are answered.  His miracles are frequently performed in a quiet, natural way."
 - Be Your Best Self, 1979 p. 29-31


"Let's not compare our faith to others - That is Satan's way - But use their examples to increase our faith to the best of our ability.:
  - Joseph Smith Lectures On Faith
 

Ether 1-6 -Diane Adair - February 7, 2012(Audio)

Daily Scripture

 …If God be for us, who can prevail against us?
JST Romans 8:31

Daily Thought

Receiving Revelation

Mormon 7-9 Nancy Baird - January 31, 2012

QUOTES FOR MORMON 7-9 - Nancy Baird

   
  The Second Coming
        Turning and turning in the widening gyre
        The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
        Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
        Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
        The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
        The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
        The best lack all conviction, while the worst
        Are full of passionate intensity.
                William Butler Yeats (first verse)


"To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man's follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it become a celestial city a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing...If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.  And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life."
                Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, 102.

"War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy.  In the last 3,421 year of recorded history only 268 have seen no war...war...is the ultimate form of competition...Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power."
                Will and Ariel Durant, Lessons of History, 81.

"That vision [of Joseph Smith's] also began the process of bringing forth new scripture (the Book of Mormon) to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Bible in bearing witness to a wicked world that Jesus is the Christ and that God lives and loves his children..."
                President Ezra Taft Benson, Ensign, Nov. 1986, 78.


        "The mind is its own place, and in itself
        Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
                John Milton, Paradise Lost


"It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life.  And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light...wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration.  You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see."
                Marilynne Robinson,  Gilead, 245.

SCRIPTURES

Matthew 10:16    "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves:  be ye therefore wise                                       as serpents, and harmless as doves."

Alma 18:22    "Now Ammon being wise, yet harmless..."

D&C 111:11    "Therefore, be ye as wise as serpents and yet without sin..."

James 5:3    "Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them...shall eat your flesh as it were                               fire...."

Hebrews 13:6    "...the Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me."

Daniel 12:2    "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting                             life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."

Hebrew 4:13     "Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked                                and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do."

Ether 2:24    "...I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth                               out of my mouth."




Mormon 7-9 - Nancy Baird - January 31, 2012(Audio)