May 7, 2013 – Matthew 28 Mark 16 Luke 24 John 20-21 by Nancy Baird

Audio May 7, 2013 Lesson 94

Matthew 28
Mark 16
Luke 24
John 20-21

Quotes
“I’ve heard lessons, sermons and class comments seeking to explain why Mary was forbidden to touch the resurrected Lord. But she wasn’t.  The original Greek meaning is:  “Don’t cling to me,” or, as the JST puts it, “Hold me not.”  “And, in fact, the Greek verb implies that she was ALREADY clinging to him. The Savior doesn’t tell her not to hold on to him but to stop doing so.”  – Daniel Peterson, Deseret News, April 5, 2012, 11.

“I hate to meet a man whom I have known ten years ago, and find that he is at precisely the same point, neither moderated, nor quickened, nor experienced, but simple stiffened:  he ought to be beaten.”  – Interpreters Bible, Vol. 5, 503.

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.
Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning;
God’s recreation of the new day.
 –Christian hymn, 1931

 

“Just to be is a blessing.  Just to live is holy.” – Abraham Heschel“How ‘present’ are we?  If we eat an apple, could we taste the rain, tell what dirt it was planted in, what part of the country it came from.  That would be being completely present.” – Li-Young Lee, Poets & Writers.

“Accidents and natural disasters often cause people to feel that life is fragile.  In my experience, life can change abruptly and end without warning, but life is not fragile…the body is an intricate design of checks and balances, elegant strategies of… survival…true in age as it is in youth…a tenacity toward life…at the intracellular level…the drive to live is strong even in the most tiny of human beings.”  –Rachel Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, 7-8.

“I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize.  That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself.” – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, 4.

“Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

April 30, 2013 – Matthew 27-28 Mark 16 Luke 24 John 20-21 by Diane Adair

Audio April 30, 2013 Lesson 93

John 20-21

 Quotes

“If the Atonement is the foundation of our faith, and it is, then no one should be content with casual acquaintance of this doctrine.  Instead, the Atonement should be paramount in our intellectual and spiritual pursuit.”      –John Taylor

“There must be some reason why Christ was allowed to suffer and to endure; why it was necessary that He should give up His life a sacrifice for the sins of the world…In these reasons all the world and we are intimately concerned, there is something of great importance in all this to us.  The whys and wherefores of these great events are important to us all.” – Elder Tad Callister

“…as a grateful people to reach out with a spirit of forgiveness and an attitude of love and compassion toward those we have felt may have wronged us.  We have need of this…it is the very essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He taught it.  He exemplified it as none other…In the time of His agony on the cross, with vile and hateful accusers before him, they who had brought Him to this terrible crucifixion, He cried out ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do’.  None of us is called on to forgive so generously, but each of us is under a divinely spoke obligation to reach out with pardon and mercy.” –President Gordon B. Hinckley

“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’  The loss of mortal support He had anticipated, but apparently He had not comprehended this.  Had He not said to His disciples, ‘Behold the hour is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to His own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me and the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please Him’…That the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His spirit, the support of His personal presence.  It was required; indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill  nor done wrong, not touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind–us, all of us–would feel when we did commit such sins.  For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.  But Jesus held on.  He pressed on.  The goodness in Him allowed faith to triumph even in a state of complete anguish.  The trust He lived by told Him in spite of His feelings that divine compassion is never absent, that God is always faithful, that He never flees nor fail us.  When the uttermost farthing had been paid, when Christ’s determination to be faithful was as obvious as it was utterly invincible, finally and mercifully, it was finished. ” – Jeffrey R. Holland

“On some days we will have cause to remember the unkind treatment He received, the rejection He experience and the injustice He endured.  When we too, then face some of those difficult times  we can remember the Jesus had to descend below all things before He could ascend above them, and that He suffered pains and afflictions of every kind that He might be filled with mercy and know how to succor His people in their infirmities.  To those who stagger or stumble, He is there to strengthen us.  In the end He is there to save us, and for all of this He gave His life.  However dim our days may seem, they have been darker for the Savior of the world.  In fact, in a resurrected otherwise perfected body, He has chosen to retain for the benefit of His disciples the wounds in His hands and in His feet and in His side…signs, if you will, that painful things happen even to the pure and perfect; signs, if you will, that pain in this world is not evidence that God doesn’t love you…it is the wounded Christ who is the captain of our soul–He who yet bears the scars of sacrifice, the lesions of love and humility and forgiveness.  Those wounds are what He invites young and old, then and now, to step forward and see and feel.  Then we remember with Isaiah that it was for each of us that our master was despised and rejected…a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief…all this we could remember when we are invited by a kneeling young priest to remember Christ always…” –Jeffrey R. Holland

“Out of the darkness and horror of Calvary came the voice of the Lamb saying, ‘Father into Thy hands I commend my spirit’…And the dark was no longer dark, for He was with His Father.  He had come from God and to God He had returned.  So also to those who walk with God in this earthly pilgrimage know from blessed experience that He will not abandon His children who trust in Him.  In the night of death His presence will be better than a light and safer than a known way.”    –President Thomas S. Monson

“How much there is incident to the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord which ennobles and exalts faithful women.  They wept at the cross, sought to care for His wounded and lifeless body, and came to His tomb to weep and worship for their friend and master.  And so it is not strange that we find a woman, Mary of Magdalene, chosen and singled out…to be the first mortal to see and bow in the presence of Jesus.  Mary, who had been healed of much and who loved much, saw the risen Christ…”    – Bruce R. McConkie