Last updated on October 8th, 2024 at 10:33 pm
September 29, 2024
Here is the best thing I heard (What?), saw (Eye.), and read (Read.) this week, as well as the best idea (💡) I developed.
What?
- [Jon Ryan Jensen] “We’ve been studying the Book of Mormon this year with our “Come, Follow Me” study in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I learned a while ago from Elder Richard Heaton, an Area Seventy, one of the ways that he was saying, ‘Hey, sometimes I understand people might get bored with the standard chronological scripture study.’ He said, ‘I’ll let you in on one of my secrets, and that is to read backwards.’ And it’s not just to read backwards just to stay awake, and it’s not to confuse you because you don’t know what’s happening in the story. But he said one of the purposes of studying the scriptures backwards is you get to start with the end.
“So, as we were studying with my young men this year, we talked about how, if you want to understand the chapters in the book of Alma not as chapters of war but as a playbook of how to potentially obtain peace, start at the end of the book of Alma, where they’re living in a period of peace, and then work your way backwards. How did they get to this happy place? How did they get to this place where they understood the principles of what it takes to have peace in your community? And then work your way backwards to see the mistakes they made so you know, ‘Here’s my list of things not to do.'” - [Boyd Matheson] “Here in the United States, of course, we have our major elections on the first Tuesday of November. … My neighbor … initiated something in our little neighborhood years ago, and it takes place on the Saturday after the election, and it is a 1K Donut Run.
“1K and donuts. So it is less than the length of one street in our neighborhood. And I remember several years ago, it was the Saturday after the election. It had been an incredibly contentious election cycle, a lot of hard feelings, a lot of emotion. And I remember that Saturday morning I woke up, and I did not want to go to the 1K donut run. And I told my wife, Debbie, ‘I don’t want to go.’ She’s like, ‘We go. We’re going to go.’ And a little begrudgingly, I got up, we went. We meet in this area, we call it the grassy bowl there in the corner of the neighborhood. And I saw all of my neighbors had come. And every year they pick a different charity, and they raise a little bit of money for that. And we have a big motivational speech about all our training, you know, to get to the end of the street so we can get to the donuts and hot chocolate. And the race is really over before it begins.
“But as I walked around, I didn’t hear a single person say anything about who they voted for or didn’t vote for, or how great this was, or how awful or terrible this was. I heard people talking about someone in the neighborhood who had just had a surgery and someone who had a parent who had just passed away. And the only thing I heard about a politician was a member of my neighborhood who, in answering a question about, ‘Oh, what are we going to do after the election?’ she said, ‘Well, my family got up and we did what we do every single morning in our house; we pray for the president of the country.’ And that was the only political comment I heard, and the race started and ended, and we ate donuts, and people stayed there for hours in community.
“It was sacred ground, because it wasn’t about the politics, it wasn’t about anything else. It was about people coming together and recognizing that we are connected as children of our Heavenly Father.”
Eye.
Uber Eats Commercial – Matthew McConaughey (Instagram):
- [Christian McCaffrey] “You’re being serious?”
[Matthew McConaughey] “Yeah, they got you where they want you.”
[McCaffrey] “I don’t think football’s trying to sell you food.”
[McConaughey] “Really? Hmph. Come on, man. Didn’t you go to Stanford?”
[McCaffrey] “I really don’t…”
[McConaughey] “And what you are eating, Jerry?”
[Jerry Rice] “Rice.”
[McConaughey] “Jerry’s eating rice. Huh.”
Read.
“The Prophet Leads Us to Jesus Christ“, Elder Isaac K. Morrison, September 2024 Liahona:
- “One day I was having lunch in the Church Administration Building cafeteria with three of my colleagues in the Seventy. While we were eating, President Russell M. Nelson came to our table with his bowl of soup and said, ‘May I join you?’
“‘Of course, President!’ we all said. Who wouldn’t want to have lunch with the prophet?
“While we ate, President Nelson shared a few experiences he has had in the many countries he has visited and talked about people who have inspired him. He was so kind, wise, and generous.
“As we finished lunch, I turned to President Nelson and said, ‘President, I don’t know if I will sit at the same table with you anytime soon. But this evening, I am going to see my wife and children and tell them that I ate lunch with the prophet. I know they will ask me, ‘What did he tell you to tell us?’ President, what would you want me to tell my wife and children?’
“President Nelson looked at me for a moment. I was so eager to hear what he had to say! ‘I have only three words for you,’ he said. ‘Tell your family that I said, ‘Keep the commandments.”
“We have all heard this counsel from President Nelson before, but in that moment, I felt a personal, strong witness that President Nelson is truly the prophet. I thanked him, and later that day I told my family what had happened. Our children later made ‘Keep the Commandments’ stickers and placed them on our refrigerator and mirrors to remind us of what President Nelson said.
“Since then, I have pondered President Nelson’s counsel. When we keep the commandments, we show our love for Heavenly Father and the Savior. We draw closer to Them and abide in Their love. (See John 14:21; 15:10.)
“This experience with the prophet has confirmed to me a profound and spiritually significant truth. In Primary we sing, ‘Follow the prophet; he knows the way.’ He does know the way! The prophet knows the way because he knows the Savior, who is ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6). When we follow the prophet, we are being led to Jesus Christ.”
💡
I need to take better advantage of the free experiences available to our family. For example, for years I’ve thought it would be fun to get takeout every Friday evening for the entire summer and eat at a different park in the Salt Lake Valley. However, yet another summer has come and gone, and we’ve once again missed this opportunity. My kids are still young and love playing on playgrounds at parks, but they won’t be young forever.
- This thought was brought to my mind again while listening to “Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life” by Bill Perkins this week.