Blessed Are The Peacemakers

  A Song to Set the Heart Right Before the story, I want to share a song that captures the spirit behind it. One of my favorite music groups (Selah) performs a beautiful mash-up   "Part the Waters / I Need Thee Every Hour" This has become my favorite version of the hymn and it expresses the simple truth that before we can follow any direction, we must first learn to depend on the Lord.... trusting His presence and guidance every hour The Compass and the Travelers A group of travelers crossed a wide desert together. Long ago, the King had given their ancestors a compass and a map, promising that anyone who followed them carefully would reach a fertile valley. The King had declared: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from My mouth.” For generations, the travelers carried these treasures with them. Sometimes a guide would arise among them, someone entrusted to read the map clearly ...

  The Moral Nutrition Beneath the Law Intro: A Skirt Challenge at the Rock When our family lived at Rockland Ranch, a remote community carved into the cliffs of southern Utah, one of the women challenged the young girls to wear dresses or skirts for a set period. If they succeeded, they would earn a special dinner date with their dads. As their mother, I didn’t see inherent virtue in skirts over pants. I believed modesty, femininity and obedience come from the heart, not the hemline. But I also felt that familiar tension, the slight unease that shows up whenever “goodness” starts getting measured by fabric instead of character. So I left it entirely up to my girls. If they felt drawn to the challenge, they could take it on, no pressure, no guilt. They chose to participate. They wore skirts whenever they stepped outside our home, but always with shorts or jeans underneath for hiking, climbing, and the rough-and-tumble play that filled their days in that wil...

  Applying Nehor to Ourselves First Scripture as mirror, not a weapon. The Nehor narrative in The   Covenant of Christ   is one of the most deliberate warnings in the record. Mormon preserves it for a reason. The question isn't whether the warning applies today. The question is how it applies, and in what order. There are two common ways to read warning stories like Nehor and the Amlicites: Outwardly , looking for a “Nehor” around us. Inwardly , asking whether the spirit and errors behind Nehor can take root in us. Scripture consistently teaches that inward application comes first. This is the beam-and-mote principle: remove the beam from our own eye before attempting to remove the mote from our brother’s. That order doesn't eliminate discernment, it protects discernment from turning into suspicion. The “single soul” warning i...

There Is Hope With Every Turn There are songs that brush past you once and vanish, and then there are songs that return years later, tapping you gently on the shoulder like an old friend who’s watched the miles roll by. I put on Steve Wariner’s Life’s Highway again the other day, and it stirred something deeper than simple nostalgia. When I first heard it, I was a child who believed the future would arrive like a rescuer. I imagined myself the damsel in a shining story, certain that one day someone would make everything safe and steady in a way home never did. An entire lifetime has unfolded between then and now, yet the melody still feels like yesterday. Ten-year-old me raced through the back alleys of Salt Lake City’s avenues with my sisters, bikes when the tires held air, on foot when they didn’t. We were poor, but summer had a way of making that feel almost irrelevant. Fruit trees hung heavy over fences, and we knew exactly which yards welcomed small thieves and which garage...

  The wise try to adjust themselves to the truth, while fools try to adjust the truth to themselves. — Thibaut "Living in truth may feel like a battle, but it brings you peace." — Unknown Truth Will Cut Its Own Way Scripture is remarkably consistent about one thing: God cannot lie. That statement describes His actual nature. Lectures on Faith teaches that if God could lie, He would cease to be God. Truth constitutes His very being. His words align perfectly with reality. Scripture places lying in stark opposition to this. Satan is called the father of lies because deception forms the substance of his work. Lies function as instruments. They bind, distort and fracture. Denver has described the chains of the adversary as lies "The world is chained by lies" and that image is precise. Lies bind people to false realities, false loyalties and false fears. Because of this, scripture doesn't leave much room for nuance about lying itself. “Wo unto the li...

  This final part of the series is longer and slower. It turns its attention to what comes after formation, not the fire, not the forge but the demanding (and often overlooked) work of carrying what has been shaped. I believe it’s worth the time it asks of you. Part Seven: The Vessel The fire has done its work. The hammering has ceased. The metal rests, warm and altered, no longer raw, no longer molten. Nothing dramatic is happening now. This is the moment most people overlook. After the sparks. After the pressure. After the long season of staying . The forge has formed something, but formation alone is not the end. Strength without containment fractures. Heat without purpose dissipates. Even refined metal must still be shaped into something that can hold, carry and serve without failing. Fire reveals. The forge forms. But something must carry what is formed This is the question that follows every season of refining. After all this heat and hammering, now what? What am I for? Scrip...