Simplify - Golden Lines

I had decided that I wanted to blog about President Uchtdorf's Saturday Morning Session talk, It Works Wonderfully, at least one or two more times, but I couldn't quite think of how to phrase what I wanted to say about what he had said about over-complicating discipleship. Ironically, the reason I was having so much trouble with my blog post was that I was over-complicating it. I don't need to have new insights in every blog posts. Sure, it's nice when I do, and I should certainly share my insights when I get them, but I shouldn't force myself to stay up late, racking my brain for profound thoughts, just because the thoughts I have aren't "blogworthy." President Uchtdorf warned us that:

[S]ometimes we take the beautiful lily of God’s truth and gild it with layer upon layer of man-made good ideas, programs, and expectations. Each one, by itself, might be helpful and appropriate for a certain time and circumstance, but when they are laid on top of each other, they can create a mountain of sediment that becomes so thick and heavy that we risk losing sight of that precious flower we once loved so dearly.

Blogging is not necessarily a "man-made good idea" to me. I believe I was inspired when I started this program of blogging every day. Over-all, I think that my blog has a strong, positive impact on my spirituality, but my high expectations of my blog posts might. We have been counseled to both go to bed and wake up early, and I haven't been doing that, partly because of my obligation to blog and my unwillingness to let my blog posts be "too simple."

I think I would like to follow President Uchtdorf's counsel and "simplify" my blog posts. They don't all have to be lengthy, insightful lessons like this one. With your pardon, my blog posts may sometimes be as short and basic as sharing a good quote and about a paragraph about why the quote stood out to me. In my history class, we have assignments like that. My teacher calls them "Golden Lines." I think that, every once in a while, I might simply pick out a "Golden Line" from a Conference talk, and let that be my blog post for that day, if you'll let me get away with that. Not only would that relieve the pressure I feel to produce "blogworthy" blog posts (and sometimes help me get to bed earlier), it would also help you, my faithful readers, by not giving you too much to read each day.

The "Golden Lines" approach to blogging may not always result in deeply insightful blog posts, and I don't intend to do that every night, but I don't always have deeply insightful, blogworthy thoughts to share, and I don't think it's healthy for me to force myself to stay up until I think of something that's good enough to blog about. That's a bit too much like gilding the lily. A short quote and a brief testimony may be simple, but "simple" isn't always bad. In fact, this blog post might have been better if I had simplified it rather than making a lengthy argument about why simplification may be a good idea, but it's too late for that now. The next time I'm up past family prayer time, still having not blogged, I'll try this "Golden Lines" idea. In the meantime, I think I'll call this blog post "good enough" and call it a night.