The Best Part of Church Today

[Anonymous]

Today was a good church day. Sacrament meeting was on service. The RS lesson was on an Elder Eyring talk. But the gold medal moment was the musical number – a brother with a truly gorgeous voice sang The Holy City. It was ethereal. We could have closed the meeting and gone home filled. Stupendous.

[Anonymous]

Our Bishopric has asked the various ward presidencies to speak in our last few Sacrament Meetings, and today was the HPG Leadership. The talks were good, but I think they missed a chance to do something wonderful and ended up settling for standard Sunday School answers. The subject was D&C 50:27 – about being anxiously engaged in a good cause of one’s own free will and choosing. Instead of focusing on things outside the parameters of what generally is asked of members, the two assistants spoke about mission of the Church and being anxiously engaged in those things – which, I believe, are good things but fall outside of what I believe is the focus of that verse. The Group Leader did talk about doing things beyond what is expected of us – on our own – finding causes we can support and getting anxiously engaged in them.

I gave one of the counselors, especially, a break, since one of his daughters is a missionary and another one is getting ready to leave very soon. His talk about preaching the Gospel was good for that subject – no guilting or pressure mentioned and a good, practical balance. He talked about the friend who introduced him to the Church, and I have a soft spot for those who have such an experience.

I always love Sunday School, since I get to teach it.

The Priesthood lesson was based on Elder Oaks’ talk about children’s issues in the world today, and I thought I would be suffering through it when I learned what it was. However, the teacher did a really good job of listing the things Elder Oaks mentioned, pointing out that Elder Oaks must have seen and read horrible things as a professional judge and focusing the discussion on what we individually can do to help children who are in need in our own spheres of influence. There was some really good discussion, including one brother who mentioned a “safe house” system in which he had participated in another area and a discussion of volunteer opportunities in town that revolve around children, and I got to mention that one thing we can do is be very careful how we talk about things like divorce when we are in groups where single parents might feel like they are being called a threat to everyone else – especially when most of them who worship with us (and many people who don’t) either were not the initiators of the divorce or initiated the divorce specifically in order to protect themselves and their children. I said we have to be very careful about making blanket statements and forgetting how many people fall outside those stereotypes, even as the stereotypes do apply to many others – and reminded everyone that even the Church itself makes explicit allowances for both divorce and abortion and leaves the ultimate decision in the hands of the spouse(s) and parent(s).

[Author]

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