On arranged marriage.

Was the marriage,
arranged?

It was time to marry,
now.

He had been home long,
enough.

His syblings,
they were married.

Then now must he start,
to date.

He prayed,
and out with a few girls,
he went.

Dad had a friend,
a girl at work.

She needed a good,
friend.

So off to the young adult activity,
swiming it was.

Little did he know of her fear,
of water.

Six months later,
to the temple,
they go.

This goal now met,
together.

So arranged was the marriage?

Or thus working on,
still.

On Casting Crowns and the wider Body of Christ.

Last night I attended a concert in the Abravanel Hall, In Salt Lake City Utah. It was performed by Casting Crowns. They are a group of musicians from Atlanta Georgia. They would be best described as Christian Contemporary Band, a Christian Rock Group. It felt like church. It felt good to meet with the church. If one accepts the wider definition that the church is the Body of Christ, a collection of his believers. To hear a Christian Pastor, speak in humbleness of his own sin, weakness, and brokenness.

To see the beards, tattoo’s, and scars of the followers of Jesus Christ. To feel the spirit flow as the word was preached in humbleness. That Heavenly Father could use the tool of loud raucous rock music to preach the Word of God, to his people.

To spend the day with my sister who has her own brokenness. This is a blessing, I will not forget.

That I may always follow the example of this pastor, and reach out in humbleness to preach his word and bless the life of every person that I meet would be the prayer in my heart today.

"And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased, speaking unto the church collectively and not individually—

For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance;"

(Doctrine and Covenants 1:30-31)

"Finally, the restored gospel is a gospel of liberality and generosity. It took my former-Catholic wife Fiona to teach me that the church John saw did not disappear; it retreated into the wilderness. Joseph Smith saw the Restoration as a bringing of that church back out of the wilderness, a restoration of the “ancient palace” now reduced to ruins, a reassembling of all the good and beautiful in the world and in the Christian tradition, that had been lost or corrupted from Eden forward. The church I love has invisible borders, and reminds me of what was written of Spinoza, that “he rejected the orthodoxy of his day not because he believed less, but because he believed more.” Or as Joseph wrote, “it feels so good not to be trammeled.”

For myriad reasons, but these five principally, I choose and affirm this path in order better to live as what Elder Uchtdorf calls “a disciple of the gentle Christ.”

https://www.fairmormon.org/testimo…/scholars/terryl-l-givens

"When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. Then from his mouth, the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

Revelations 12:13-17 NIV

"I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions—as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms." ... "But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable. it is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hail for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling. In plain language, the question should never be: ‘Do I like that kind of service?’ but ‘Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to knock at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?’

When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house." C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity: Preface