I had a lengthy telephone conversation today with a long-time friend. I learned not very long ago that he’s on hospice care, and I had hoped to visit him before we left for Canada. But I was back in Missouri, where I developed a remarkably persistent and irritating cold, which I didn’t want to pass on to him. I’m still dealing with it, and now I’m up here in Alberta.
I don’t know how long he has. He actually sounded stronger to me than he has recently sounded, but he says that the indicators are definitely headed downward. I hope that he’ll be around when I get back. I would like to visit with him at least one more time — I hope many more times — and it’s conceivable that, by the end of July, I’ll have actually shed this wretched cold.
He’s surprisingly upbeat. He feels that he’s done, in his life, what he was supposed to do. He’s finished his mission, and he fervently looks forward to seeing his wife again.
I could not possibly imagine a striking place to have had such a conversation. While two gyrations of the clan were paddling a canoe around Lake Louise, one of the most beautiful places on the planet — amidst the kind of alpine scenery that most powerfully inspires me with transcendent thoughts of heaven — I was sitting at the end of the lake, speaking with someone who is, with complete serenity and confidence, about to pass into the eternal worlds. He will very definitely be in my prayers tonight.
The talented Jasmin Rappleye has posted a not-quite half-hour-long podcast addressing the question of “Who’s Getting Paid? The Secret Economy Behind Latter-day Saint Influencers,” in which she addresses the question of whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is covertly subsidizing podcasts, paying for online testimonies, and the like. She knows far more about such matters than I do, so I learned quite a bit from listening to her. What I do know, however, is consistent with her views on the subject.
Newly posted on the unchanging and essentially comatose website of the Interpreter Foundation:
- Nibley Lectures: Come, Follow Me Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 29: “I Will Lead You Along”: Doctrine and Covenants 77–80 During 1978, 1979, and 1980, Hugh Nibley taught a Doctrine and Covenants Sunday School class. Cassette recordings were made of these classes and some have survived and were digitized by Steve Whitlock and recently enhanced by Nick Galieti. Most of the tapes were in pretty bad condition. The original recordings usually don’t stop or start at the beginning of the class and there is some background noise. Volumes vary, probably depending upon where the recorder was placed in the room. Many are very low volume but in most cases it’s possible to understand the words. In a couple of cases the ends of one class were put on some space left over from a different class. There’s some mixup around D&C 90-100 that couldn’t be figured out so those recordings are as they were on the tapes. Even with these flaws and missing classes, we believe these these will be interesting to listen to and valuable to your Come, Follow Me study program.
- Come, Follow Me — D&C Study and Teaching Helps (2025): Doctrine and Covenants 77–80: July 14 – 20: “I Will Lead You Along”. Jonn Claybaugh continues to provide concise but useful notes for students and teachers of the Come, Follow Me curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Unsurprisingly, in the aftermath of the tragic and lethal flooding in Texas, some atheists and religious skeptics are challenging belief in God in a world where such events happen — as if this were the first instance of natural evil to raise questions of theodicy, Providence, divine mercy and justice, and divine power. Here are a couple of articles that I’ve come across that respond to that very serious issue, perhaps the most troubling issue that confronts theistic faith and religious believers. It’s the perennial problem of why bad things happen to good people:
- Deseret News: “Prayer works — even when it seems it doesn’t: After the devastation in Texas, some are asking where God is. It’s a question even C.S. Lewis asked”
- Real Clear Religion: “Voltaire, Catastrophes, and the Problem of Job”
Which moves us directly into a pair of items from USA Today and from the Deseret News, both of which were located in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:
- “Camp Mystic, those devastating videos and the role of faith during disasters”
- “Faith leaders and congregations call for prayer, respond to devastating floods in Texas: In the wake of catastrophic floods, faith communities rally in prayer, mourning and relief efforts to support grieving families and survivors”
This passage from the Hebrew Bible should give some sense, at least, of how long humankind has struggled with agonizing questions of injustice and natural evil:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 KJV)
Posted from Canmore, Alberta, Canada
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