On Testifying (D&C 62:2-3)

(2-3) You haven’t done everything I expect of you yet, but the way you’ve testified of me, in actions and in words, resounds in the heavens and brings joy to those who came before you and those who will come after. Continue to work, renewed, knowing that you are blessed, and your sins are forgiven.

3 And verily mine eyes are upon those who have not as yet gone up unto the land ofZion; wherefore your mission is not yet full.

4 Nevertheless, ye are blessed for the testimony which ye have borne is recorded in heaven for the angels to look upon, and they rejoice over you, and your sins are forgive you.

Wait, What Are Translations? A Brief Explanation, Because Apparently Not Everyone Is Obsessed With Adam Miller

Adam Miller, the patron saint of this blog, wrote in my favorite of his books, Letters to a Young Mormon, “You and I must translate these books again. Word by word, line by line, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, God wants the whole thing translated once more, and this time he wants it translated into your native tongue, inflected by your native concerns, and written in your native flesh.”

Translating has become one of my favorite ways of studying the scriptures. I take the words in the scriptures and write them the way that I would if God had given them to me, now, instead of a prophet hundreds of years ago. This means I have to wrestle with them, to study and decide what I think meekness means, or what is charity if I don’t let myself hide behind the word itself?

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(Loosely) Isaiah 55

Hey, you, the one kind of struggling—come here. I know you don't have anything to give me back, that's OK. Rest here, draw strength, let me feed you and take care of you. Do you need a hug?

Dear one, why are you putting your resources into things that don't make you happy? Why are you spending your energy on things that don't fill you up?

Come here, listen to me, and you will remember what it's like to feel alive and joyful. I will make the same promises with you that I made with those that came before you, and you will be sure of my mercy and tenderness.

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Romans 8

So there are a couple of ways of going through the world: you can and follow after the things you can see and touch or you can try and pick your way after Jesus, even though you can't see or touch Him and the ways that you know Him will feel counterintuitive a lot of the time. Because when Jesus came He brought a new law, one that offered an escape from sin and death, and by this new law, you can feel your way after Him. But to make the law live—we are the life of the law—we have to follow it and fill it, we must walk by faith and hope, following after things we can't see or touch.

Because if you model your life after the things you can see and touch, then that's it, that's all you're becoming, physical and material and tangible. And those aren't bad, God is in those things too. But, like God, you're more than that. You are beyond the touchable, and you have to make place for those unseeable things in you, you have to follow after them to become them. As you fill the law with life, so it fills you with life and peace.

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Jeremiah 29

(These are my favorite scriptures about “living in the world but not of the world.”)

This is what God said to everyone that was forced out of Jerusalem into Babylon:

Build houses and live in them. Plant roots, grow gardens, dig up the vegetable and pick the fruit and eat it, year after year. Get married, and have kids and then marry your kids off and have grandkids and surround yourself with family. Don't stop living just because this is not what you expected, don't lean into the lessness, make it more.

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2 Nephi

Everthing must have an opposite, because all existence is dependent on opposition. In minds like ours that are shaped by language and draw lines between things in order to distinguish and understand them, we would never comprehend right without wrong, or good without bad—and we would never see that the opposite of misery is holiness. Without opposites, everything would be just one big ball of being, and our brains wouldn't be able to sort through it. There would be no real life in this reality, no real consciousness, and no real joy. Things would be created, but to no end. They would exist, but would not truly be. And we would never have access to God's power and justice and mercy, we could never see who He is and what we are, we could never become like Him.

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John 1

In the beginning (the very beginning, the Genesis) there was Christ, who was the organizing principle of the universe, reality itself. And He was with God, and was God, but also wasn't, in some confusing ways that people have been disagreeing about for a long time, because it's both somehow. Regardless, everything's being and beginning came through him; nothing was created without him (so every person you meet and particle you breathe is touched by divinity, is stamped with His mark). What He made was life, all life, life now and the possibility for eternal life, and light, all light, physical light and metaphorical light. There was darkness too, but the darkness could not overcome the light. This is a dark story sometimes, so we're going to tell you that upfront. The light wins.

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