The Flowers at My Feet

A year ago, I shared an image with the comment "Don't set your heart so much on the mountain in the distance that you cannot enjoy the nearby tree or the flowers at your feet." I think that that advice still stands. All my life, I've been working toward a particular mountain, and I've recently gotten closer to that mountain than I ever have before, but it still feels like it's an eternity away, perpetually out of reach. Meanwhile, my current circumstances are almost embarrassingly good. I'm enjoying good fortune that I know others don't. I'm grateful that I've been blessed with a good life with good people in it. So, while I keep walking toward that mountain, I'm going to appreciate the flowers around me and stop by that nearby tree on the way.

It's important to have long-term goals, but it's also important to appreciate life even while pursuing them. I'll get to that mountain when I get there. In the meantime, I'm going to take the time to enjoy the flowers at my feet.

Without Power

We recently had a power outage at my place, but honestly, it wan't a big deal. We were still able to use our battery-powered devices to get around and even communicate with others. Granted, our batteries weren't going to last forever without power, but they were still very helpful for the time being.

Similarly, we can, at times, draw power from God. But at times when God's power and guidance aren't forthcoming, that's when He trusts us to get by on our own. Naturally, we won't be able to get by on our own forever, but we may be more capable than we realize, and God wants us to grow independent. We still need God, but I imagine that won't be true forever. When we have worlds of our own, we'll likely have to get by on our own power. Perhaps having to get by on our own down here is practice for that.

I'm grateful that we usually have access to God's guidance and power, but in another way, I think I'm also grateful that God sometimes trusts us to be able to get by without it.

A Narrow Focus

The scriptures we've been reading this week have had a pretty narrow focus on the Creation, and have been mostly spent comparing and contrasting three very similar accounts of the same series of events. This is good for a deep dive and detailed analysis of the texts, but we haven't really branched out to find a wider range of insights.

For instance, a Sunday School lesson covering the topic of the Sabbath Day could address the origin of the Sabbath, what the word "Sabbath" means, why the Sabbath changed from Saturday to Sunday, why we should keep the Sabbath Day holy, and how we can do so. However, if the teacher limits themselves to using only the scripture references in this section of the Come, Follow Me manual, then they can really only cover the origin of the Sabbath and not a lot else. This is alright, if we want to consider the Sabbath in the context of the Creation, such as by wondering why God, an immortal and thus tireless being, decided to rest after His labors when He didn't physically need to, but there's little else we can learn about the Sabbath, going only by these scriptural references.

In some cases, it's good to have a narrow focus. In other cases, it may be better to branch out and use the manual as a starting point for our own scriptural exploration. The manual itself may not have very many unique insights, but the scriptures have plenty of insights we can find. We just may have to broaden our focus to find them.

Practical Application

I sometimes read the scriptures from the perspective of the question of what the practical application is. Why is it important for me to know this? How am I to use this information? What difference is this knowledge supposed to make in my life?

The answer to these questions is, at times, "It's not," "You're not," and "None," as it was with the ancient prophet who was shown countless worlds and then told that he only really needed to focus on this one. Sometimes, insights are more "interesting" than they are practical. But of course, different people need different messages at different times, so the scriptures record countless messages, knowing that, whoever you are, and wherever you are at this point in your life, there's something in this book that applies to your situation, whatever it may be.

I don't know the practical application of what we read in scripture study tonight. Perhaps there is currently no way for me to practically apply what we read in the scriptures tonight. Maybe God has other things He wants me to focus on right now instead. All we can do is read the many messages God has shared with us and listen for the Holy Spirit to tell us how (and if) we should apply them.

Not all messages apply to all people at all times. Discernment is needed to determine which message(s) we should apply at any given time, and how we should apply them.

Overanalyzing "Above"

So, I had some stuff on my mind tonight, and I thought I might blog about it, but I also felt like unwinding, like I usually do at night, only to suddenly realize that I hadn't actually blogged about what I had had on my mind. Oops.

We're learning about the Creation this week, and part of our scripture study has involved overanalyzing the various accounts of the Creation. I say "overanalyzing" because we literally spent over half an hour discussing what it meant that there was water "above" the firmament/heavens/expanse, rather than "in" it. I don't remember if any consensus was reached, but I mostly chalk it up to imprecise language. Most prophets weren't English Majors (if they even spoke the English language at all), so maybe they didn't get too hung up on which preposition they used.

And maybe we shouldn't either. Yes, it's good to look closely at scripture, and if you can gain any insights from such a thorough examination, all the better, but if something doesn't make sense, like water, which I assume means humidity and clouds, somehow being "above" the firmament, which I take to mean the sky, then it's probably safer to assume that it doesn't matter than to wonder why Moses might have mentioned comets or ice planets when writing about the creation of the Earth. No, the water was not "above" the firmament, in that the clouds were not "above" the sky, but maybe people look at the sky differently in other cultures, or maybe Moses was referring to atmospheric layers centuries before anyone would discover them, or maybe whether the water was "above" or "in" the firmament isn't really important enough to argue about for half an hour (or write about hours later) when we could be focusing on other things instead.

We could have talked about our favorite aspects of Creation or perhaps drawn some insight from the example of taking life or long-term projects "one day at a time." We could have observed the themes of opposites and divisions, with light being separated from darkness, earth separated from seas, and waters being separated from each other (regardless of their position in relation to the firmament). We could have talked about how the world just works and how blessed we are to live on it. But instead we argued about where, exactly, the water was and how (or if) the dinosaurs and/or evolution factor into all of this.

This wasn't our finest scripture study session, but thankfully, now that I've blogged about it like I had thought I had, I've come up with a few examples of the kinds of questions I wish I had asked instead. The exact wording of the scripture probably didn't matter; in the future, I'll try to focus more on questions that do.

Service > Church

This morning, before getting ready for church, I helped a family member of mine clean up a mess that their pet had made. Thankfully, that didn't make me late for church, but even if it had, I figure that doing service is probably more important than getting to church on time.

Naturally, going to church is important, but there's little point in learning about Christ if we're not also going to act Christlike by performing Christlike service. Hearing and learning are good, but doing is better. In fact, I'd argue that a person who serves others freely, despite never having heard of Christ is probably more Christlike than someone who attends church religiously but who rarely serves others, more like Pharisees than true Christians.

Jesus wants us to learn of Him and do His works, but of those two, I believe the latter is more important than the former.

A Rough Start

I've recently started playing more Mario Kart. In that game, if you start holding the acceleration button down at the right time during the countdown at the start of the race, you can get a speed boost to help you get started; however, you have to time it right. Start too late, and the speed boost won't be as powerful as it could have been. Start too early, and the "speed boost" will instead cause your engine to stall out, making you wait a moment before being allowed to accelerate the normal way.

Yet, in my experience, the beginning of the race doesn't matter a whole awful lot. Mario Kart also has items. These items have a negative feedback loop with the character's current performance in a race. When you pick up an item box, the item you get is "randomly selected" based on your position. If you're already winning, you'll get an item that's pretty weak and mostly useless. But if you're behind, you're likely to get better items that will help you close the distance and perhaps even advance a place or two in the race.

Besides, even without the items giving the racers in the back more help than the racers in the front get, racing skill can generally overcome a rough start. There are several tricks that can give you a momentary burst of speed if you can pull them off without driving yourself off the road, and even staying on the road can sometimes be a challenge which, if accomplished, can help a racer perform well. Stumbling at the starting line isn't so big a deal when you can make up for that stumble by racing well across the rest of the race.

I say all this because January 1st, 2022 may not have gone great for everyone. I'm sure that some people's year may be off to a rough start. However, that doesn't mean that the entire year is doomed. Luck usually balances itself out, forming a neat bell curve with good and bad luck fairly evenly balanced on both sides of the median, and of course, our personal decision to dust ourselves off and move forward persistently can overcome the struggle of having a bad day. Even if today didn't go the way we wanted it to, we can put in the work to make sure future days go better. With enough diligence and the right attitude, we can make sure 2022 is a decent year, no matter how it started.

So, some people's start-of-the-race speed boost didn't have as much umph as they were hoping for, or even flooded their engines and caused them to stall. The race isn't over yet. In fact, it's barely gotten started. We still have a full three laps (or 364 days) ahead of us. Those laps (or days) can still go well for us, whether or not the first one got off to a rough start.