Often Christ didn’t get the welcome wagon, red carpet treatment either….are any of us greater than He?

Is it not pride that has us all imagining all our still-only-potential future celestial glory ought to be bowed down and worshiped by our fellow beings when we appear at our ward?

If you aren’t contagious and you aren’t spending yourself into a pit to get there–please attend your Sabbath day meetings as often as “oft” can mean for you. It may at least keep hellacious thoughts from arising in the less magnified minds in your ward!

Just when the Lord knew I was over the close proximity to private restrooms–he assigned my husband to a stake calling that required tons of long drives to other units. Try imagining even fewer restrooms per mile, on average….

We have one car… So the children and I could go with him or not go to church at all at our ward. Bearing one another’s burdens covenant didn’t prompt anyone to buy a shuttle bus to help us be able to go….

We went with him. The people at our ward made all sorts of speculations, most quite rude and indiscreet. The real fun was the stupid behavior from various leaders and members of the other church units–almost like we were spies, very, very interesting reaction as these units were ….statistically challenged in many of the way the Church measures activity. That early 1900′s sacrament attendance rate quote someone put out above would be an improvement to these guys and the tithing–and therefore where their heart is looks about the same. In the exact month our cash, our home equity cash stolen back from ourselves and enslaving ourselves again to a bank, and the warranty on our car ran out–the Lord sent a windows of heaven deal with several offers at once. One which would require weekday travel quite often which would rack up hotel rewards points which enable a large family to afford to go to the temple often and his weekends are still clear for “natural man visible Church Activity”.

The Lord knows who is active in the Gospel and active in His Kingdom, which is the Church. Some of us here on earth being a little deaf–he communicates this to some of his servants through information available from the clerk’s office and I bet some tracking of those nifty bar codes that get scanned at the place where after all the practice sessions are done– Jesus himself will meet us sometime.

For sisters, brothers, whoever who unnecessarily get hung up on the pants and skirt thing–please remember this:
Heavenly Father, Savior and Messiah Jesus Christ and Angel Moroni all showed upwearing very close to ankle length….. gowns!
Hem length apparently does matter;)

“For of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation.” D&C 82:3

What does it mean to have “much given”?

In my opinion it would certainly include all those who have been baptized, raised in the church, and have felt the Spirit of the Lord (there are many others, but I will only mention this group).

The question then becomes: what is the most important objective before each of those who have been blessed so abundantly?

When we’re baptized we are offered the opportunity to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Unless we diligently seek to receive this gift and are born again, we are “still born”. This is what happened to the ten virgins (#15 above). Five were born again, having received the Holy Ghost, and five were “still born”. Remember the language of the parable: wise and unwise, not wicked and righteous, good or evil.

Five were valiant in the testimony of Jesus, and five were not valiant.

The most important task we have is to fulfill our baptism covenant and acquire the gift of the Holy Ghost–the First Comforter. Then we can begin to contemplate the offer to receive the Second Comforter.

The Lord is no respecter of persons. All are alike in His eyes. Our birth status, educational status, church calling status, and whatever other status we care to examine is not going to be a vicarious means to gain the status of being born again by fire and the Holy Ghost. There is only one path to this blessing and all of us of high or low “status” will travel this path naked of the things of this world if we hope to acquire the blessing that comes with the remission of sins.

It always amazes me how people link callings to spirituality and sitting your butt in a chair every Sunday as being “active”. And if you don’t make it to the Christmas dinner…then oh well, you’re going out of darkness.

are we the parents who break superficial promises and God is the child? Or is God the parent who breaks a promise?

I guess that I’m arguing that it is more mature to view “covenants” as something that, at some point, may no longer be in the best interest of all concerned. At that point, those involved in the covenant would want to be “mature” enough to simply no longer consider it binding.

So, in my analogy, God would have the wisdom to know when a covenant is no longer binding — it is not a matter of breaking a covenant or ignoring covenant — it is a matter of maturity about covenants. (I am not saying we should ignore covenants. I’m just saying that our view of them may be oversimplified and child-like.)

She’s not been able to be active in the Church, but her level of Gospel activity puts me to shame.

The Lord knows what is in our heart…why we do or don’t do the things we do and don’t do in our lives. He knows those items, issues or circumstances that restrict us from accomplishing what we desire to in our hearts.
There are many with physical, emotional, social or other restrictions that keep them from being “active” in the church.

I think each individual needs to ask himself am I doing all that I am able to do, to live the gospel in my personal circumstance? For some, that requires both activity in the gospel and activity in the church. For others it does not. And of course there are many varying levels of activity in the spectrum of it all.

I believe that we will be surprised at how many the Lord will say “Well done thou good and faithful servant” to…that it won’t just be members of the LDS church….but will include those of many faiths…… those who strived to live good lives, who did the best they could, who were “active” in the gospel in their hearts according to their “GIVEN” circumstances.

I just hope to live in a way to be among them.

“I would be surprised if God did not have at least as much understanding. I don’t think he see’s covenants that same way that we do.”

In this analogy, are we the parents who break superficial promises and God is the child? Or is God the parent who breaks a promise?

Nonetheless, we must ask why we have the home teaching program and why even from Joseph Smith’s day the purpose of the home teaching program has been to encouraging people to be active in the Church (as well as in the Gospel). It seems obvious to me that there are many reasons: taking the Sacrament is crucial to understanding the Atonement; fellowshipping with your fellow Saints is important to learning how to work within God’s structure of an eternal Church; being active offers many more opportunities for service that you might not know about if you were inactive; being active offers you the opportunity to help others inside the Church and be a teacher to the young or to new members; being active means knowing about stake temple days and helps remind you to get a temple recommend and go to the temple regularly. I could go on.

Our bishops and stake presidents constantly urge us to be active — interestingly one of the stake themes this year in my stake is encouraging members to go to Church more often and make sure they take the Sacrament regularly.

So, while I am sure there are many, many worthy people who are active in the Gospel without being active in Church, it seems to me it is possible to do both and we should try to do both.