Protection

Over the past week and a half I have had many events occur in my life that were a little out of the ordinary for me. For one thing, I went with my sister and two of my neighbor friends to visit my other sister in California. We drove through the night on our way there and we drove through a blizzard on the way back. Then again, this past weekend I drove with some other people in my family and met my sister from California halfway between us to exchange cars, becuase I am buying her car from her. On the way there we had to deal with tremendous wind--wind which had blown over three semis that we passed. And on top of that I had a lot of end of the semester schoolwork to do. But somehow I made it through it all. Throughout these experiences it struck me again and again how important this life is. We're here for a purpose and when we keep that purpose in view (whether it be increasing in knowledge through schoolwork or building a testimony of the Gospel) the Lord will take care of us in whatever way we need. I saw that when we had troubles on the road. Those two drives were the two scariest drives I've ever been on, but I felt protected the whole time.

Eternal Symbols

This past week I studied varous religious paintings in the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University. The details and the symbols used in these paintings blew me away when the educator from the museum taught my class about some of them. I've seen these paintings many times before, but every time I see them I get some new meaning from them. It's easy to miss significant details in paintings (at least for me) and when those details are overlooked, you miss part of the message the artist was trying to portray. One of my favorite paintings I studied (which I actually only really studied on a previous visit to the museum) is the one above. The main details I got right away: the chairs (one standing upright the other tipped over) and the red and white cloths. It represents Christ's atonement and our final judgement. Christ is represented by the upright chair and the white cloth because he is pure. We are the other chair and the red cloth. But as said in Isaiah 53, "Though your sins be like scarlet they shall be as white as snow." Through Christ our cloth can become white--we can become purified when we submit ourselves to His will. I needed some prompting for some other details though. At first I didn't even notice the faint circle encompassing the whole scene. The circle can represent many things, from eternity to inclusion. Simply put: Christ's atonement is for everyone and is eternal. One final detail I will talk about is the dark rectangle behind the chairs. At first glance it appeared to be just that to me, but after looking a little closer it looked like a tunnel which you had to pass by the chair to enter. This suggests that our final judgment once this life is over is not the end. We can live forever through Christ--for eternity. I love this painting and I'm sure there are so many things I can still glean from its symbols.

Personal Histories

On Saturday (Feb. 27th) I attended the Church History Symposium at BYU for my Doctrine and Covenants class. A lot of what the speakers at the symposium talked on was more technical than I really understood, but when Elder Marlin Jenson spoke at the end it struck me that a large part of the history of the church is the history of its members. I feel like I need to write my personal history--as much as I dislike writing, I feel like it's something I should do. I've begun the process a little bit because of my family history class, but there is still so much that I need to do. We are required to write about five episodes of our lives for my family history class, but that's not quite enough. A daily journal is the ideal way for me to do this, but I've never been good at writing regularly. The closest I have to it is this blog and I don't say too much about my life in here...so I have a lot of work to do. One line from Elder Jenson's talk really stood out to me. He said, "If God has commanded it, do it." It's as simple as that. We have been commanded to keep a journal/create a personal history and we just have to do it. It's going to be hard for me, but I'm going to try!!