http://ldsliving.com/The-Town-That-Rescued-5-000-Mormon-Refugees/s/80468   “Freely ye have received,” says the Savior at Matthew 10:8, “freely give.”   I was moved today, during the afternoon session of general conference, by Elder Patrick Kearon’s address about refugees.  And I was moved by the emotional reaction to those remarks of President Dieter Uchtdorf, who was himself a refugee as a child in Europe after World War II.   “This moment does not define them,” said Elder Kearon, “but our response will help define us.”... Read more

    “Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on his anvil into what frame He pleases.” Anne Bradstreet, Puritan poet and writer   Read more

      On the Sabbath, it seems to me appropriate simply to take a moment, sometimes, to contemplate the wonder, order, and beauty of the cosmos in which we live.     Read more

    Even in archaeologically well-plowed areas such as Italy, where written sources abound in ancient languages that (with the exception of Etruscan itself) are well understood — the future Roman emperor Claudius even wrote a history of the Etruscans and (he’s the last ancient person known to have been able to read it) a dictionary of the Etruscan language — significant discoveries remain to be made.  Unless, of course, this happens to be the very last one, ever:  ... Read more

    I’m late with this — Easter’s already past — but John Gee makes a very interesting point here that, frankly, hadn’t occurred to me before:   http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com/2016/03/what-this-years-early-easter-date-tell.html     Read more

    “Mythicism” — the notion not only that Jesus wasn’t divine but that he probably never existed at all — has become very popular among some online atheists and religious skeptics.  (It’s found little support among scholars in the relevant disciplines, whatever their religious views.  They tend, in my experience, to have no great patience for mythicism or mythicists.)   One of the arguments advanced by mythicists points to the lack of references to Jesus outside the New Testament.... Read more

    The remarkable story that begins in Mosiah 20, the chapter on which I’m commenting today, is a straightforward and interesting one.  But there’s a great deal that can be, and has been, said about it.   Here, for example, is an article by my longtime friend and former BYU and Maxwell Institute colleague S. Kent Brown:   http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/jerusalem-zarahemla-literary-and-historical-studies-book-mormon/marriage-and-treaty-book     Read more

    This is fantastic:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865651371/Nonprofits-inundated-after-LDS-Church-urges-women-to-serve-refugees.html   This is the kind of thing that I really want the Church and the Saints to be known for.  We are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Ahead of all politics and all national allegiances, important as they are, we are followers of the Savior.     Read more

    “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” Attributed to Abraham Lincoln (probably falsely)     Read more

    http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/upcoming-lectures-editing-out-the-bad-grammar-in-the-book-of-mormon/         Read more