August 2025, Week 1

 *Today at church, we sang "In Humility, Our Savior" (172), which includes the words, "Then when we have proven worthy Of thy sacrifice divine, Lord, let us regain thy presence; Let thy glory round us shine."  I am sometimes sensitive to the word "prove," because of the area we live and the resistance of many in other religions to the "works" we are invited to do as we are on the covenant path.  They say, "Faith is all you need!  No works!  You're trying to earn your way into heaven!"  We had the sister missionaries over for dinner on Saturday, and they were talking about encountering this resistance, so it was on my mind when I sang, and it made me pause.  I looked back over the words of the hymn to see what we needed to do to prove ourselves worthy of Jesus's sacrifice, and I found 1) be humble, 2) Remember Christ, 3) forgive, 4) have tolerance and love, and 5) offer prayers.  That is a valuable list of things to do, and if I need to prove myself worthy to enter God's presence in these ways, I'm willing.

*Sister Bond shared her testimony about the temple, and how she loved to take her girls to see the Los Angeles Temple when they were young, and it was a place to find peace.  I related, not only because my parents would take us to see the Los Angeles Temple when we were young, but also because of our trip to Las Vegas last week.  Ben and I stayed on the strip and watched several shows, but we didn't rent a car, so we walked up and down and through several casinos to get to them.  One of the mornings, we took an Uber to the Las Vegas Temple to do a session, and it was so lovely.  Twice Ben commented that he felt like we were "home" at the temple, though we'd never been to that one.  As we were waiting for our Uber back to the hotel, I could look down from the hill and see the strip in the distance, and I noted the contrast in where we were to where we were going--the feeling of peace versus the feeling of chaos, excess, and extremes.  I'm grateful to have the two, and to recognize where I prefer to be.

It was a delight!