LDS Christmas Devotional 2013 Conference Center Salt Lake City

Christmas Devotional 2013

Sometimes I forget I am still a child to my Father in Heaven and He sometimes uses similar ways to help me to learn, that I used as a parent long ago with my little ones. At times He has felt to impress upon me something in a strong measure, by bringing it to my mind sometimes in advance of a thought or piece of music. So it was no surprise to me to hear our prophet speak of gifts in this season, especially as it relates to gifts we give rather than receive and the type of gifts that are better. As he quoted Rosetti's poem "what should I give to Him poor as I am?, I would give my heart", I thought of all the gifts upon store shelves and remembered a thought I had a day or two ago.
What type of gift are we? We may think of ourselves as that bargain, but the only one qualified to make a judgement on our worth, is the one who knows the value of it, because He has already weighed our cost and found us worth His payment. Others may value us lowly, we ourselves may feel we are that cheap bargain, but Our Savior is the only one qualified to price us, and to Him we were worth His sacrifice, a Tiffany class gem and worthy of the life and sacrifice of the Son of God.

The stories and the music of this year's Christmas Devotional shared stories of the inspiration of scout leaders, loving mothers and talented musicians who have sought to teach lessons of faith, sacrifice and a loving God. In the season of gifts, we are the ones who have received the greatest gift, the birth of a Savior.

How short are ours days upon this earth
One moment to the next the years roll away
Through each year which we are blessed to be
May we live the spirit of these seasons
 According to the example of life Our Savior has set. Worthy of the gift.

Mirror, mirror

I looked in my bathroom mirror this morning and saw my great great grandmother looking back at me. I never thought I looked anything like her, if anything I look more like my mom, but the face shape is there, even if the other features are not. It started me thinking about my family, which started me thinking about how tough many of their lives were.

My grandfather and many of my uncles worked in the pit mines of Derbyshire.

My grandfather started out very young as a pony handler

He use to say some of the best brains in the country worked in the pit because there was no choice in those days.

Rick's Uncle many generations back in Germany was killed because he poached a rabbit, it was the reason for his brother's immigration to this country before the Revolutionary War and the reason he aided the American troops that crossed his lands during the war.

My uncle Len was arrested for picking flowers along the train tracks in England ( I think they thought he was picking up slag from the tracks which was illegal)  I have often thought he probably was but the couldn't prove it, since everything in the area was covered in coal dust he could have laid the slag down and picked the flowers when he knew he was caught. I don't think he realized flower picking on railroad property was also illegal.

The Crucifixion

Why do we need the crucifixion? 

We know that Christ suffered in Gethsemane, that he took our sins, and the suffering he endured for us was beyond our own ability to endure. At this point once having already suffered, the God who saved us, could have just given up his life and avoided the cross, instead he endured again and allowed himself to be scourged, and hung. Only after being crucified did he voluntarily give up his soul and die. He could have just laid down his life peacefully in his sleep. So why after enduring so much did he choose to endure again? I think the answer is the same as the answer to why he endured Gethsemane, he did it for us. It is beyond our ability to understand the atonement, so he gave us and the people of his time something they could understand, the crucifixion. He gave us a physical manifestation of part of what he endure so we would always understand his sacrifice, we can never understand his pain for us completely, the atonement was never in our ability to suffer, but we with our limitations can understand the physical pain of the act of being crucified. It is another sign of his love for us that we are given a sample of the pain he endured by his enduring and overcoming something we physically understand, human physical pain.

09:03 PM

Like it is.....here goes the speel..

Thinking about resurrection and the difference between it and a restoration of life as in Lazarus, both are done thru the power of the priesthood. 

In the same thought, I was thinking obviously there is nothing a woman adds to the type of priesthood function that restores life or heals (other than chicken soup and the warm hug). But what part do women play in resurrection or are we just by standers? 

What is required for resurrection? We have only one example in the scriptures. 

So let's look at it:

Christ's Resurrection requirements

1. Resurrection requires the priesthood

2. Resurrection requires perfection or a perfect individual to mediate

3. Resurrection requires faith, repentance and observance with the law

Keeping in mind the basics, resurrection being the uniting of spirit and body

4 Resurrection requires a spirit

5 Resurrection requires a body

 6 resurrection requires pain , I think even with all Christ has done living and leaving this life can often mean suffering at times. His resurrection required great pain so as the example I think we will not go thru it without some form of it ourselves but thanks to Him not the full measure.

I am probably missing a few, but I think we hit what I need.

So what is a woman's role in resurrection.

1. A body is required, and without a woman's participation even in this world of genetic engineering, no body comes into it without some woman being part of that. ( I had to check but a sexual altered individual will become unable to bare children, or sterility in men. Just as it is required to place a fetus created in laboratory conditions, into a viable womb in order to complete it's entrance into the world)

 Wikapedia "For IVF to be successful it typically requires healthy ova, sperm that can fertilise, and a uterus that can maintain a pregnancy. "

 Just silly. No success in a laboratory, can compensate for failure in the womb

2. Along with birth, comes some pain, women sit between heaven and earth during birth, no man can do that. Her body is literally the door way into life.

3. At birth we start the progress of resurrection since without a body we cannot be resurrected.

4. There is no doubt in my mind that although restoration of life can be performed without a woman thru the priesthood function of healing, no resurrection can occur without a woman.

5 It is by faith and reason alone, because I have no true knowledge of this, but I have faith that the birth of spirits requires both male and female, for how could it be otherwise. For why else create women if they were not required.

So without women there is no resurrection, there are no spirits created and there are no spirits born into this world, what power the priesthood has without us is the only the power to restore what was, the power to create and resurrect belongs to the combined powers of heaven, male and female. I can't see it being otherwise.

General Conference Oct 1996 Women of the  Church

President Gordon B. Hinckley

First let me say to you sisters that you do not hold a second place in our Father’s plan for the eternal happiness and well-being of His children. You are an absolutely essential part of that plan.

Without you the plan could not function. Without you the entire program would be frustrated. As I have said before from this pulpit, when the process of creation occurred, Jehovah, the Creator, under instruction from His Father, first divided the light from the darkness and then separated the land from the waters. There followed the creation of plant life, followed by the creation of animal life. Then came the creation of man, and culminating that act of divinity came the crowning act, the creation of woman.

Each of you is a daughter of God, endowed with a divine birthright. You need no defense of that position.

********

From a devotional address given at Brigham Young University on 13 March 2001.

Ensign Apri 2002

M.  Russell Ballard 

Women of Righteousness 

There are those who suggest that males are favored of the Lord because they are ordained to hold the priesthood. Anyone who believes this does not understand the great plan of happiness. The premortal and mortal natures of men and women were specified by God Himself, and it is simply not within His character to diminish the roles and responsibilities of any of His children.

As President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972) explained, “The Lord offers to his daughters every spiritual gift and blessing that can be obtained by his sons” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1970, 59; or “Magnifying Our Callings in the Priesthood,” Improvement Era, June 1970, 66). All of us, men and women alike, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and are entitled to personal revelation. We may all take upon us the Lord’s name, become sons and daughters of Christ, partake of the ordinances of the temple from which we emerge endowed with power, receive the fulness of the gospel, and achieve exaltation in the celestial kingdom. These spiritual blessings are available to men and women alike, according to their faithfulness and their effort to r

eceive them.

The basic doctrinal purpose for the Creation of the earth is to provide for God’s spirit children the continuation of the process of exaltation and eternal life. God said to Moses:

“And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them.

“And I, God, blessed them, and said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Moses 2:27–28).

The Church’s proclamation on the family confirms that God has not revoked or changed this commandment. The First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles “solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children” (“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 102).

Today I remembered my wonderful grandmother who no matter how dead they looked always put our violets in water after we spent the day picking them.

So When asked to pray for a sick newborn I couldn't seem to pray for a complete recovery so I prayed she'd be old enough to pick violets.

Fence sitter

I have sometimes thought that in the war in heaven before man came to earth that I might well have been an early fence sitter. I think it highly possible that the winds of war just came along and blew me to the side of righteousness. It isn't that I am by nature a bad person, just a somewhat lazy one, and I am sure the  Lord is well aware of my weaknesses. Which is why it surprises and doesn't surprise me at the same time when He maneuvers me into something I either think I can't do or don't think I really want to. Don't get me wrong I always have free choice, but it is hard to deny there is a desire on His part for me when all roads of escape seem to be blocked, and I have to make a choice. Usually by that time the choice has been made very clear, so there is little decision except the one to do or not.

One of those things in life...

I'm no genius, I've spent most if my adult life married to a sort of geek. He is not so bad that I have to spend my life looking up things he has told me, although upon occasion I have done that. But still it has been a bit of a keep up or else kind of thing. Technology is his shiny object, and I have had to lean to keep up with the systems, computers, and processors that have flowed thru the house over the years. If I sound a little sour I really am not, somewhere on my refrigerator there is a magnet that says    something to the effect of failure to keep up with technology will hinder your ability to survive it. I firmly believe we live to the age we can endure and no longer. Those able to most adapt live the longest, and more important live under less stress. Things not understood can become things that frustrate, and frustration breeds stress, stress kills.
It has been commented that I am a very lay back kind of person, I wasn't born this way, I was in my youth the ultimate contender. I would pick an argument just to have one, even if I really agreed with the other view point, playing the devil's advocate was fun for me. As a very young child my sisters were afraid to take me places because I would usually say the first thing I thought, it usually was also the first thing they thought, but were old enough and polite enough not to say it. I had no compulsion, I just blurted out what I was thinking. I am not sure if I just didn't care,I would like to think I just didn't have the maturity to know what one says can be hurtful. Thank goodness my kids were less inclined to be like me. It took me a long time to learn the lesson my mother tried to instill in me, she use to say, "quietness beats the devil".  She learned that from her own father who was a gentle, quiet man with a volatile wife and 12 kids, he should have been a basket case yet he learned peace. I guess I learned it too.