"Thy Will Be Done"

I've seen some posts in the Bloggernacle recently exploring the proper application of this phrase during prayer. I thought I'd share my opinion, since I haven't updated in a while and am enduring quite a drought of bloggable spiritual thought.

I'll stress that this is a very superficial thing. It's not something to nit-pick over.

But, I don't mind it. It's a good reminder, especially if you're offering a prayer in public. And maybe it does have some doctrinal purpose; Jesus used quite similar wording just before the trials of Gethsemane were initiated. Luke 22:42:

Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

Hmmm...

And maybe it really makes a difference. Maybe if Joseph employed such a phrase when seeking permission to transfer manuscripts to Martin Harris's possession, those 117 pages wouldn't have been lost. But maybe they would have, and we don't know that he didn't say that. Although I'm more inclined to think he didn't, since the way the scriptures read kind of make it sound like Joseph was trying to convince God that it was okay, just like something might try to get a kid to do dope.

Maybe Heavenly Father takes more of what we say into account than some people expect. Sometimes I think we make the gesture of praying and expect that Heavenly Father will just unpack and decompile all of our emotions and intents. And of course he does do that to a part, but what part? Can it become an invasion of privacy? Maybe it's one of those respecting our agency and space things.

I don't know. But I have a lot of maybes in here, so I need comments now where you help me sort this out.

This got a lot more complicated than I thought it would.
:)

A Heart's Determination

I came across a passage from Abraham 3 today that got me thinking a little bit:

"...and there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it." (Abr. 3:17)

This is clearly similar to our little Western maxim of, "If you set your mind to it, you can do anything." But this uses heart instead of mind. Maybe it's kind of a trivial thing, but I thought it was interesting. When the Lord sets out to do something, he commits to it with full spirit; he takes it into his heart, his core. He puts the cause into the same place where personality, spirituality, and the whole intelligence of a being live and thrive.

That's a pretty good example of being anxiously engaged, I think. I wonder how different things would be if more of us tried harder to follow it.
:)

Dating

In honor of Valentine's Day, I'm going to post some recent things I've been thinking about regarding the structure of what I believe the church would consider the "ideal" dating set-up for high-school aged people, especially males.

I think it's a good idea not to do the steady thing until you're ready for marriage. As far as I know, the majority of church leaders would agree. I've been taught that in later adolescence, it's better to gather a whole bunch of experiences and meet a whole bunch of people than it is to start out to be one-on-one at that time, even if such a relationship would not have bad results. I agree with that teaching too.

Say there are two Latter-day Saint teens who both are committed to living the aforementioned teachings and they meet and like each other a lot. Either of these teens would be willing to initiate a boyfriend-girlfriend thing if not for the wise advice of their progenitors to date a lot of people. Now, this isn't such a hard one to solve. The two would not initiate a boyfriend-girlfriend thing despite their inclination to do so, but they would still go on dates periodically and like each other &c., while also dating other people and developing new relationships and friendships. This is beneficial I think.

However, I think the potential ramifications of this on a teenager who so lived can be interesting. What kind of affect would that have on their post-mission/post-high school love life? Doesn't it, at least a little bit, cultivate a hostile attitude toward monogamy? Would that be a root of temptation in marriage? Might it be a support for polygamous marriage? &c.

And now, while typing this, I've answered a lot of those questions. I guess it could have such consequences, but isn't so likely too. It just encourages strong friendships more than anything. Oh well, I think I'll post this anyway. You can still post comments too. :) Hopefully the next post will be thought-through better.

Welcome.

I'm starting this blog because sometimes when I read Times and Seasons or Mormanity or something else in the Bloggernacle, I think about how I should have one of these things to post stuff about church in. This won't be updated as frequently as most of the others are certainly, but I'll still try to post something sort-of worthwhile every now and again.

Here's a little background about me. I'll be 17 in 3 days on February 16, 2005. I really like to learn about the church and all of that. I just moved back to Sandy City, Utah, a week ago. I was born here and we moved to Longwood, Florida when I was three. When I was eight, we moved to Olathe, Kansas, where I lived until last Saturday. I don't expect there's much of an appetite for angst among the target audience for this blog, so I'll try to keep the teenagery drama stuff to a minimum and leave my parents out of most things. I've written for The Kansas City Star and quite a few websites, most of which have failed. I run www.gamebaboons.com, but as you can tell from the front page, I have some trouble gathering the motivation to do anything with it. I'm a junior in high school and I'll probably enroll at Jordan High School here in Sandy, although I think that Alta would be better. I don't make good marks. There's a complicated backstory on that that may or may not come out as I post.

I'll do what I can to make the my other posts more professional and less adolescent than this welcome was. The template of the blog will probably change a little bit too, but probably not too much because I don't care so much. I'm kind-of thinking about making it a group blog by a lot of teenagers who have good LDS insights, etc., just so it will then be interesting and updated more. So if any of you are like that and come across this, drop me a line. Thanks for reading. ^_^