January 22 2018 3 Nephi 15-17 by Nancy Baird

Joseph Smith said in a letter dictated from the dungeon of Liberty Jail after he had been there for 5 months:

“Thy mind, O Man (and we may add O Woman as well), if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost Heavens, and search into and contemplate the …darkest abyss and the broad expanse [of eternity]…”

John Welch, BYU Studies 50, no, 3 (2011),66.

Years before C.S. Lewis, the great theologian, became a Christian, he was strolling with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, a devout Catholic and creator of “The Lord of The Rings.”  After listening to Lewis voice doubts about faith, Tolkien stopped and looked at him.

“Jack,” he said, “failure to believe is simply a failure of imagination.”

He was talking about “spiritual imagination,” of course.

The imagination that can comprehend a reality beyond the realm of senses.

from article by Jerry Johnston, Sat. May 15, 1999, Des News.

“Children are always on the edge of committing an act of kindness, always ready to go in that direction.”

“I’ve never seen a young child be anything other than very interested in what other children look like, do, say, how they behave – they’re fascinated.  They have a tremendous, almost scientific interest in each other.”

Vivian Gussin Paley, Kindergarten teacher, The Kindness of Children.

“We think of children as vulnerable.  In my experience they are giants.  Their bodies and souls are amazingly resilient.  What we often mistake for fragility is their openness.”

Fred Epstein, pediatric neurosurgeon

Nov 22 2011 3 Nephi 15-17 Nancy Baird

Quotes

“If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves.”
Joseph Smith, King Follett Discourse, (Willard Richard’s account), in
                  The Words of Joseph Smith, 340.

“Thy mind, O Man, if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost Heavens, and search into and contemplate the …darkest abyss and the broad expanse [of eternity]…”
Joseph Smith, letter from Liberty Jail, in John Welch, BYU Studies 50, no, 3 (2011),66.

                      “The mind is its own place, and in itself
            Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
                    John Milton, Paradise Lost

“We can make our minds so like still waters, that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images.  And so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”
William Butler Yeats

“At some level we want to know that what we do matters…We all want to be judged.  We want to be taken seriously as moral creatures…I am convinced that every human being has an existential need for significance…We have this need for significance. We do incredible things.  We go into medical research, we write books, we invent new patents to know we matter.  We also do terrible things.  People try to assassinate the president and commit other heinous crimes, just to know they have an impact on the world. Religion teaches that God cares about what you do.”
Rabbi Harold Kushner, speech at BYU, in BYU Magazine, February 1995, 22-29.

SCRIPTURES

Genesis 9:13    “I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and             the earth.”

John 10:16    “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall         hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.”

Abraham 2:12    “…Thy servant has sought thee earnestly; now I have found thee.”

D&C 93:36    “The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.”


Mark 12:20    “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all             thy MIND, and with all thy strength:  this is the first commandment.”


Proverbs 16:22    “Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it…”

Proverbs 15:14  “The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge.”

3 Nephi 15:18     “And now, because of stiff-neckedness and unbelief they understood not my word;             therefore I was commanded to say no more…”

3Nephi 19:33    “…and their hearts were open and they did understand in their hearts the words which             he prayed…”

Proverbs 9:10    “…the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”

Hebrews 8:8,10        “…Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah…I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.”