Friends, we are so pleased to share the speakers and sessions for Restore:Connect, happening September 24-26 in Orem, Utah.

Ticket holders will be able to register for their preferred sessions beginning September 1, and sessions will fill up quickly, so register today to make sure you can attend the ones you want!

You can view the full agenda any time at faithmatters.org/restore.

REGISTER HERE

Friends of Faith Matters get a 20% discount on all in-person events—thank you for your ongoing financial support!

Can’t make it this year? All sessions will be recorded and made available to every ticket holder following the event! There will be no livestream option this year, but the recordings can be preordered today.

REGISTER HERE

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 24, 6-9PM: THE RESTORE:CONNECT KICK OFF SHOW AND ART GALLERY OPENING SOCIAL

Restore:Connect begins on Thursday at 6pm with the art show opening social, and a special kick off show starting at 7:30pm hosted by Mallory Everton and featuring Steven Sharp Nelson, Emily Susan Pack, the Restore Community Choir, and more! Learn more about how you can join the RCC here.

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 9AM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Chad Ford and Jamie White’s 9am session will be 2 hours long (with a 20 min break).

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 10AM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Joseph Grenny and Tucker Boyle’s 10am session will be 2 hours long (with a 20 min break), and that Chad Ford and Jamie White’s 10am session is a continuation of their 9am session, not a repeat.

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 11AM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Joseph Grenny & Tucker Boyle’s 11am session is a continuation of their 10am session, not a repeat, and that Patrick Mason’s Friday 11am session will be repeated on Saturday at 9am.

12PM-2PM LUNCH

Boxed lunches are available as an optional add on to your registration, and you’ll be able to visit our vendor hall, bookstore, contemplation area, art gallery, and more!

REGISTER HERE

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2PM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Jennifer Finlayson-Fife’s 2pm session will be 2 hours long (with a 20 min break).

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 3PM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Jennifer Finlayson-Fife’s 3pm session is a continuation of the 2pm session, not a repeat,

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 4-4:30PM - CONCERT WITH SOUND OF AGES

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 6-8PM - FAMILY NIGHT WITH EMILY SUSAN PACK AND JOSH & SARAH SABEY

A high-energy singing time for families. This isn’t just a children’s concert—it’s a joyful gathering designed to be enjoyed by parents and children alike. Share songs, stories, and music together. Brought to you by For Little Saints and performer and comedian Emily Susan Pack.

Can’t make it to a full day of Restore? Tickets to just this event are available here!

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 9AM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Patrick Mason’s Saturday 9am session is a repeat of his Friday 11am session

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 10AM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Chad Ford’s 10am session will be 2 hours long (with a 20 min break). Melissa Dalton-Bradford’s session will be a follow up Q&A, not a repeat of her Friday 3pm session.

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 11AM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Chad Ford’s 11am session is a continuation of the 10am session, not a repeat.

12PM-2PM LUNCH

Boxed lunches are available as an optional add on to your registration, and you’ll be able to visit our vendor hall, bookstore, contemplation area, art gallery, and more!

REGISTER NOW

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 2PM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Ravi Gupta’s 2pm session will be 2 hours long (with a 20 min break). Sharlee Mullins Glenn and Amy Watkins Jensen’s 2pm session will be a follow up workshop from their Friday 10am session, not a repeat — you are welcome to attend either or both!

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 3PM (CHOOSE ONE)

Note that Ravi Gupta’s 3pm session will be a continuation of the 2pm session, not a repeat.

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 4-5PM - WORLD PREMIERE OF A STAGED READING OF SHARLEE MULLINS GLENN’S BRIGHTER AND BRIGHTER UNTIL THE PERFECT DAY

Directed by renowned director/producer Kathy Curtiss, this staged reading of Brighter and Brighter brings to life an offering of imagination that, in the words of the late Carol Lynn Pearson, “invites us into new layers of thought” and brings “the Mother back into the Motherless House of this world.” Featured actors include Rick Macy, Dianna Graham, Melissa Dalton-Bradford, Daniel Tuutau, and more.

Can’t make it to a full day of Restore? Tickets to just this event are available here!

We know these are impossible choices! The good news is all sessions will be recorded and made available to every ticket holder following the event! There will be no livestream option this year, but the recordings can be preordered separately if you can’t attend in person.

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Today, Dr. Ellen Davis joins us to talk about this ancient, essential book, and describes the Psalms as a kind of script for the full range of human experience before God. The Psalms, she says, expose “all parts of our soul for healing.”

In this conversation, Ellen, who has spent years translating the Psalms, shows us just how expansive this ancient prayer book really is. She calls the Psalms a kind of “First Amendment” for the life of faith: permission to bring everything before God. Even the shape of the book reflects that, with lament gradually giving way to praise by the book’s end. Ellen also takes us beneath some familiar translations with words like nefesh, usually rendered “soul.” Ellen says this actually probably means something closer to our whole embodied self, challenging the idea that our spiritual lives are somehow separate or at odds with our physical ones. It’s another way the Psalms widen our sense of prayer—it’s a vision spacious enough to hold our grief, our anger, our bodies, our silence, and our joy, trusting that all of it belongs in our relationship with God.

Dr. Ellen F. Davis is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School and the author of several books exploring scripture and the life of faith, including extensive work on the Psalms.

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STUDY “COME FOLLOW ME” WITH FAITH MATTERS

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JOIN WAYMAKERS IN WASHINGTON, DC ON SEPTEMBER 19!

This event is FREE and open to the public (ages 16+), but registration is required. Space is limited especially in the afternoon workshops, so be sure to register now…then invite your friends to do the same!

“Peacemakers Needed” will be a half-day workshop featuring multiple keynote addresses and interactive workshops. You’ll learn practical, skills-based strategies from experienced teachers that can help you navigate interpersonal, interfaith, and political conflict with greater understanding and confidence.

REGISTER HERE

Waymakers

"Peacemakers Needed" Event in Washington, DC

When Chad Ford and I launched Waymakers, we had a vision of bringing together people for peacemaking trainings all across the country (and maybe beyond!). Because we both live in Utah, as do so many of the amazing people participating in and supporting this work, it made sense for our two inaugural Repair gatherings to take place here — first in Provo, …

Read more

16 days ago · 1 like · Patrick Mason

JOIN MWEG FOR A SPECIAL COMMUNITY SCREENING ON SEPTEMBER 17

Join us for a free community screening of “9/11: Reclaiming Ground Zero,” a powerful documentary that explores the story behind the rebuilding of Ground Zero and the people who came together in the wake of tragedy to shape a shared future.

This documentary invites us to reflect on resilience, healing, and the importance of community. Through stories of collaboration, remembrance, and hope, it highlights how people from diverse backgrounds worked together to honor those lost while creating a space of dignity and renewal.

Following the screening, attendees are invited to participate in discussion focused on peacemaking, understanding, and the power of respectful conversation. We’ll explore how listening to one another’s perspectives and building relationships can strengthen our communities and inspire collective action.

This event welcomes all community members. Registration is required.

REGISTER HERE

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Redemption comes only through Jesus Christ.

We no longer bow down before golden calves; instead we worship—without realizing it—the glowing gods of our smartphones and, even more so, the algorithms that control our digital feeds. In this context, the act of bowing my head during prayer is a radical act of choosing the object of my devotion. Even if I can only glimpse the character of the divinity I worship, yet this is a God I can actively seek and to whom I choose to be devoted. Unlike the nameless and faceless algorithms that rule the digital universe, the God I seek to worship is a pair of Heavenly Parents who are infinitely defined by mercy, justice, hope, benevolence, and love. Thus, choosing to bow my head in deference to this definition of divinity is both a symbol of my humility before God’s love and also a manifestation of my commitment to become more loving.

—Tyler Johnson, “Form as Function”

That reconciliation in heaven and earth is the testament of God’s love for us: we can be free from blame not just on the day of judgment but also today. Sin makes space for redemption and carves out a capacity for joy—and we can feel that here and now. Eve and Adam understood this, noting that were it not for their transgression, they would never have known the joy of redemption—a joy which can be felt in this life and in eternity (Moses 5:10–11). While the fall of Eve and Adam bears eternal consequences, its effects are only temporary because of Jesus Christ: spiritual and physical death can both be overcome through him.

—Anabelle Clawson, “Revelations of Divine Love”

Because of the Savior’s mercy, I can be forgiven.

Listen to “Stories and Sin: A Conversation with Adam Miller,” which includes a question about how to help our kids develop a healthy relationship with these concepts:

My testimony of Jesus Christ can help others come unto Him.

Sometimes, faith sinks its roots into the soil of our need. Maybe she’ll get baptized. Maybe she’ll go to the temple someday. Maybe she’ll join herself to the network of relationships the temple points us toward, extending her own threads of trust through time and eternity.

Then again, maybe her time with us will be brief. People drift into and out of groups all the time. There might be some stumbling block that gets in the way. Or maybe she’ll end up getting interested in something else. In her life, it’s entirely possible that this isn’t a new foundation so much as a temporary haven. If that’s the only role we end up playing, does that mean we failed? I don’t think so. Jesus called his people to be like salt. Sometimes, salt’s job is just to get people through the winter.

Whatever path that young woman chooses, I’m glad to be part of a community whose doors are open to her. I’m proud of the outgoing leaders who were there for her when she needed them. I’m proud of the newly called leaders who will freely offer her their time, energy, and attention over the coming months or years. I’m content to leave the rest of her life to whatever combination of human choice and God’s will guides the world.

—James Goldberg, “Sealing & Salting”

The Lord will help me in my time of need.

The God who walks with us through the wilderness overspills with open-handedness. When the dust-throated people complain of thirst, Moses smites the rock “and the water came out abundantly” (Numbers 20:11, emphasis added). We could imagine a mere trickle, but that wouldn’t account for the use of that word, “abundantly.” This was more than enough to quench the thirst of the dirt-encrusted Israelites. The Psalmist remembers how God “brought streams . . . out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers” (Psalm 78:16). One can envisage the young Israelites splashing in this life-giving liquid, the desert sand turning to mud. This was grace you could wade in, swim in, drown in. Sometimes we receive grace sufficient for the day; other times abundance overflows our nostrils (see Numbers 11:20). …

We will be bitten by the poisonous serpents of mortality, but the Christ who suffers with us offers us healing through a glance (Numbers 21:5–9). Where we fix our gaze will determine our thriving. If we are blind to the angels in our path, we will be tempted to curse this life and the people that God has placed before us (Numbers 22:21–35). But when we see with open eyes that “it please[s] the Lord to bless Israel” (Numbers 24:1), we can sing songs of hope, can live in wondrous awe, can shout praises to the God who is light and shadow in the wilderness. I believe that “the Lord [does] delight in us” and has brought us “into this land” and that it is indeed “a land which floweth with milk and honey” (Numbers 14:8).

—Robbie Taggart, “Perceiving the Wild Abundance of the Wilderness”

God holds his silence 
so that He can feel it all, don’t you see? 
             Your emptiness, 
             his emptiness. 
You are forsaken; you are together. 

His silence is God listening to you. 
His silence is his reverence, his awe 
at just how dark, how broken is your world. 
His silence is his offering to you, not refusal.

—Gideon Burton, “Silent Saturday: On God’s Silence”

Wayfare

What Can the Gospel Promise?

After Happiness: Living with Faith in a Time of Crisis By Natalie Brown Greg Kofford Books, 2026…

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8 days ago · 1 like · Greer Bates Cordner

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Today Mike takes us straight into one of the most striking turns in this story: Job’s friends show up in his deep suffering, and one by one try to defend God with tidy theology, debate him out of his grief, and ultimately accuse him of bringing this suffering on himself. But then God show up and finally speaks, rebuking the friends and declaring that it is Job—the one who questioned, lamented, and wrestled—who has spoken truthfully. Mike unpacks what that reversal means for anyone who’s ever felt like their questions made them the problem.

And then there’s Job himself: a good man who loses everything. Mike walks us through what this ancient story has to teach us about our own doubt, grief, and the sacred work of asking questions—showing again how honest questioning can be the threshold to a richer spiritual imagination and deeper faith.

Dr. Mike Petrow is the host of The Healer With a Thousand Faces and one of the lead hosts on the Everything Belongs podcast with Father Richard Rohr. He’s the Manager of Formation for the Center for Action and Contemplation, a jungian spiritual director, and a certified grief and trauma counselor. And we are so thrilled to share that he’ll be joining us live at Restore:Connect this year!

We hope this conversation is nourishing and sparks lots of new insights for you as you study the book of Job this month.

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JOIN MIKE PETROW AT RESTORE!

Mike will be talking more with Tim and Aubrey about Sacred Questions and the Holy Work of Anger this September at Restore, along with dozens of other exciting speakers and presenters! You won’t want to miss it—registration is open now!

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STUDY “COME FOLLOW ME” WITH FAITH MATTERS

To receive Come Follow Me resource roundups from Faith Matters in your inbox, first be sure you are subscribed to the Faith Matters Substack, then go to manage your subscription and turn on notifications for “Come Follow Me”.

Subscribe now

JOIN WAYMAKERS IN WASHINGTON, DC ON SEPTEMBER 19!

This event is FREE and open to the public (ages 16+), but registration is required. Space is limited especially in the afternoon workshops, so be sure to register now…then invite your friends to do the same!

“Peacemakers Needed” will be a half-day workshop featuring multiple keynote addresses and interactive workshops. You’ll learn practical, skills-based strategies from experienced teachers that can help you navigate interpersonal, interfaith, and political conflict with greater understanding and confidence.

REGISTER HERE

Waymakers

"Peacemakers Needed" Event in Washington, DC

When Chad Ford and I launched Waymakers, we had a vision of bringing together people for peacemaking trainings all across the country (and maybe beyond!). Because we both live in Utah, as do so many of the amazing people participating in and supporting this work, it made sense for our two inaugural Repair gatherings to take place here — first in Provo, …

Read more

16 days ago · 1 like · Patrick Mason

JOIN MWEG FOR A SPECIAL COMMUNITY SCREENING

Join us for a free community screening of “9/11: Reclaiming Ground Zero,” a powerful documentary that explores the story behind the rebuilding of Ground Zero and the people who came together in the wake of tragedy to shape a shared future.

This documentary invites us to reflect on resilience, healing, and the importance of community. Through stories of collaboration, remembrance, and hope, it highlights how people from diverse backgrounds worked together to honor those lost while creating a space of dignity and renewal.

Following the screening, attendees are invited to participate in discussion focused on peacemaking, understanding, and the power of respectful conversation. We’ll explore how listening to one another’s perspectives and building relationships can strengthen our communities and inspire collective action.

This event welcomes all community members. Registration is required.

REGISTER HERE

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“I have trusted … in the Lord.”

Reflecting theologically on the issue of migration is not only an outer journey, but also an inner journey into the human heart. If we allow it, the migrant experience can become a sacred text as we seek to understand the emotional and spiritual terrain of their inner landscape. The outer journey of a migrant—leaving behind the familiar, facing uncertainty, and seeking a place of safety, security, and rest—mirrors the inner journey of the soul in profound ways. Both journeys demand resilience, faith, and a willingness to embrace the unknown.

There is perhaps no better text through which to examine the complex inner terrain of migrants than that of the Psalms. Indeed, just as the “forced migrant-Psalmist” in biblical exile once lamented his plight beside the rivers of Babylon, so now do refugees weep in their own experience of exile, seeking relief from violence and oppression and yearning for freedom, self-expression, and a sense of community and belonging. Making up the “great hymnbook in the heart of the Bible,” the Psalms invite us to consider the full dimensions of the mortal experience. They invite us, as does Jesuit priest Walter Burghardt, into a “long, loving look at the really real,” offering a window into both the bright lights and the dark corners of the human soul.

As we consider the “graced-human interplay” between the lived expression of modern-day migrants and the Psalms, we must ask ourselves, “How do our migrant brothers and sisters find hope amid some of the most hopeless of situations? How do they find life in the midst of death? And how do they ‘trust in God within some of the most seemingly godless of experiences?’”

These are the borderlands—and places of revelation.

—Jenny Richards, “These Are the Borderlands”

We are mindful of the ways migrants and refugees have shaped the restored gospel of Jesus Christ; indeed, migrant stories are foundational to our faith. Scripture stories in our holy canon emphasize the plight of the migrant and refugee, and of God’s help in their lives. From Abraham and Sarah’s sojourns as a “stranger[s]” in foreign lands (Genesis 23:3-4), to the exodus of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt; to Ruth choosing to worship with her mother-in-law’s people, to Esther advocating for her endangered diaspora; to the escape of the holy family into Egypt, to the entire Lehite tradition of the Book of Mormon and their various migrations and challenges within the Americas, all serve as witnesses of the precarity and dignity of the human condition. They also bear witness of God’s abounding love in whatever circumstances His children find themselves in.

—Megan Armknecht, “Day of the Refugee”

Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah.

Neither we nor Jesus were born into a world of fairness, justice, or peace. Nevertheless, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, offers a way through the destructive conflicts that plagued his day and ours. Jesus responded to the conflict that engulfed his world in ways that would bring more than a temporary respite from the ravages of war and enmity. He taught that the root cause of conflict derived from the human heart. He was concerned that “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matt. 24:11–12 NIV). Jesus was interested in ushering in a new kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. Yes, he would be a Messiah. Yes, he would offer liberation and salvation, not in the way we want, but in the way we need.

—Chad Ford, “The Peace We Need”

It’s the early Christian disciples, who had anticipated a glorious, militaristic Davidic deliverer. But instead, they experienced a messiah who was a poor, itinerant preacher who was horrifically crucified by the very Romans He was supposed to overthrow. In the presence of that reality, they re-read and re-interpreted their cherished Hebrew scriptures in new light, discovering meaning more precious than they originally anticipated. In writing scripture about Jesus’s life and ministry, they were not merely recording history but redeeming it by building meaning from their shattered expectations. The process imbued their human reality with divine hope.

This type of remembering redeems Esther, Henry, Beulah, and Florence, my daughter and me, and creates something better from all of it. It recognizes that others in the body of Christ are also on our team, and across time and space they will accomplish the things we can’t.

—Hannah Packard Crowther, “Redeeming”

“The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.”

The word of the Lord is powerful, “rejoicing the heart.”

The final phrase—“speaking unto the church collectively and not individually”—makes clearer sense if the divine voice is expressing pleasure in the Church, rather than declaring it to be the only one carrying legitimacy. The grammar itself seems to bear witness to the deeper truth.

So why does this matter?

Because words shape belief. And belief shapes behavior. Throughout history, countless souls have been hurt, marginalized, or dismissed in the name of religious exclusivity. Families have been torn apart. Relationships lost. Wounds inflicted.

And yet, I believe—deeply—that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a sacred calling, much like other true and living religions. They have the potential to be healing forces in the world. To be places where supreme love is made manifest. To be communities that rejoice in all truth, wherever it is found. To be assemblies of people known not only for doctrine and covenants, but also for humility, openness, and compassion.

—Michael Ferguson, PhD, “The Spirit of a Sentence”

The voice, of course, is the voice of Christ, and at first it can be hard to understand. Why? Is it because Christ mumbles? Or is it because his is “not a harsh voice, neither . . . a loud voice”—the only kind of voice we now have ears to hear? Perhaps his voice will remain unintelligible or even unheard until we finally settle down and listen with renewed humility—with hearts and ears and eyes pointed “steadfastly towards heaven, from whence the sound [comes]” rather than in whatever other direction our polarized environment has dragged the needle of our inner compass.

President Dallin H. Oaks, in his first extended remarks after becoming the president of the Church, focused on the pointed message of his predecessor, Russell M. Nelson, becoming a second prophetic witness that “in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” President Oaks added his own warning: “You live in a season in which the adversary has become so effective at disguising truth that if you don’t have the Holy Ghost, you will be deceived. Many obstacles lie ahead. The distractions will be many.”

If the still small voice—the quiet “voice of perfect mildness”—is a sound we can only hear when we are listening, are we listening?

—Morgan Davis, “Zeal and the Still Small Voice”

The Savior can help me be pure so I can enter God’s presence.

Find everything we’ve published in Wayfare on the temple experience here.

Unlike the inhospitable Simon, God greets us with open arms and an open heart. This seems to be David’s perspective in Psalms: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (Psalm 23:5-6). In these oft-quoted words, David positions himself as a guest, whom the Lord protects, honors, and provides for in abundance. The concluding line reflects his assurance that he is welcome in the Lord’s house and may dwell there forever enjoying the blessings of the Lord’s hospitality.

—David Sabey, “The Lord’s Welcome”

The word repentance unfortunately carries with it a lot of baggage such as penance, shame, and the idea that heaven must be earned, so the word is a mixed bag. But the reality it points to is worth noticing.

Gracing, I believe, is this reality. Repentance is the journey of turning to God again and again. We forget to join with God, and then we remember. We think we are right, and then we realize we are wrong. We stop living a lie. We stop telling ourselves stories that keep us stuck. We live with ego-driven, narrow vision, and then, as with a camera lens, we zoom out and see that God was present all along. Our experience and story changes. God offers alternate views, relationships, healings, and ways of being and seeing—over and over.

But through a softer lens, we also heal from our accumulated wounds. With Jesus, people who are blind see. People who are deaf hear. People who are lost are found.

—Hannah Crowther, Gracing

What if I’m already worthy?

What if God’s love is so radical that I can’t earn it and I can’t comprehend it?

If I sit through that restlessness, rather than being driven by it, rather than constantly striving to avoid that sense of not being worthy, what if I sit so deeply in that sense of being unworthy that the bottom falls out, and I come into something even more true, which is, no, you don’t need to earn it. That’s not what this is about. That’s not the situation.

Then I found myself motivated from a new place. I was actually striving more than ever, if we want to use that word striving, but it was coming not from a place of lack, like I got to earn this or all is lost. It was like, Wow. Divine love is so radical and it’s inspiring me to live the best life I can. And that’s really my privilege to get to express that love in my own unique way as best as I can.

— Thomas McConkie

Grace lives in abundance. If we accepted grace, we would share with others. Accumulating money is the antithesis of grace. Buying large houses while others are homeless is a denial of grace. Wearing expensive clothing while others go hungry is dis-grace-full. Our modern society would have appeared deeply immoral to hunter-gatherers. The same would have been true from the perspective of those described as the happiest “people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God” (4 Nephi 1:16).

Happiness is morally fraught. Meritocratic happiness takes joy and pride in what it has “earned”. It atomizes or individualizes us, telling us that happiness is our own responsibility and that we shouldn’t be jealous of one another. Grace-full happiness, on the other hand, is comparative. It doesn’t mind its own business. It looks to the neighbor, the stranger, the migrant, and asks if they are happy. Since “it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin” (D&C 49:20), happiness must be communal and we must be “equal in all things.”

—Justin Pack, “The Dis-grace-full Logic of Merit”

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Today we’re talking with Dave and Kirty, Dallin’s parents, married 22 years, raising four kids, longtime Utah County residents. For more than three years, they kept Dallin’s story private, scared of what they might lose, and of what it would cost Dallin if their community found out. Many of their questions remained unresolved. But eventually, the secret became too heavy to carry alone.

So together, they helped Dallin share his story with trusted leaders in their ward, in a gathering of Young Men and Young Women leaders who had known him for years, he bore his testimony, and shared that he is gay. One by one, these leaders stood up, embraced him and assured him that he was so loved—and that he belonged. That moment marked the beginning of a new way forward, where isolation gave way to the healing that comes from being known and loved.

In this conversation, Dave and Kirty are remarkably candid about the fear they felt at first, the questions that still remain, and the unexpected ways this journey has transformed them—a journey that, as Kirty says, has become “the biggest blessing of their lives.”

Dave and Kirty would be the first to tell you their story isn’t a prescription for any other family’s journey. But if you’re a parent near the beginning of this path, or a leader wondering how to better love and support the youth in your ward, we hope you’ll be inspired by their courage, their humility, and creativity.

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STUDY “COME FOLLOW ME” WITH FAITH MATTERS

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I can trust God in all circumstances.

The faith needed is not trust that, in the end, all our suffering will have been for some unknown but foreordained good. Instead, faith in God is a trust that, in spite of our suffering, he can bring us (and anyone else who desires to do so) to live with him. Trying to tame suffering by making it something explicable tempts us to forget that God himself lives in a world where there is suffering. Suffering and evil disrupt the good, but he responds by repairing the breaks they create.

…As Christian theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jürgen Moltmann emphasized in the twentieth century, the trust of all Christians is that by responding to suffering in love, in imitation of Jesus, we can be recreated by the Father, made into new beings. The God of scripture, in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, is a being who suffers with us, weak and vulnerable even when he has all the power there is.

…Given Joseph Smith’s revelations about the nature of God, persons, and the all-that-is, it seems likely that suffering and evil are inescapably aspects of all-that-is. There is no being without the possibility of suffering. Famously for Latter-day Saints, God himself suffers, and not only during his life on earth (Moses 7:28). Yet, even if suffering is inescapable and ultimately inexplicable, trusting in God means trusting that he has the power and ability to save us from sin and the resulting physical and spiritual death, whatever our suffering.

—James Faulconer, “In Suffering, Love”

And so while Job never came to any answers or explanations, he did find peace. And he found peace because he was brave enough to ask God the hardest question of all: Why? Why is a question you will also ask someday. When your house falls down, when your fields burn, when your children are taken from you without warning or explanation, when your life becomes a whirlwind, you will sit in stunned horror on a seat of ashes, and you will look up towards the hidden places of heaven and cry, “Why?” And you will be a little afraid to ask it because it is scary to ask a question you don’t know the answer to. And it is even scarier to ask a question that might not have an answer at all.

But you will still ask. Because the world God has made is very beautiful, and very, very messy. It holds so much — joy and evil, goodness and suffering. It is enough to break you. But it is precious to God. And so are you. And that might not feel like an answer. And maybe it isn’t. But I can promise you this: it is true.

Jesus Christ is my Redeemer.

To be clear, my most foundational theological belief is this: God will never cause or condone suffering. Yet, since we exist as eternal beings in an oppositional universe, this is my secondary and nearly as resolute conviction: Our Heavenly Parents can consecrate suffering they do not cause or condone. Thus, while we are never meant needlessly to remain party to suffering, yet we can always trust that God will raise a phoenix, even from our darkest ashes. That light will make its way into and finally illuminate even what may initially seem to be the loneliest, scariest, and seemingly most impenetrable darkness.

God is light; and light finds a way.

In the meantime, we are not meant to construct a world where suffering ceases so much as we are meant to transform suffering forever into love.

—Tyler Johnson, “This Is Grace”

Good friends uplift and encourage each other.

This, I think, is the most important lesson that we learn from the Book of Job. When Job’s comforters sat with him for seven days and seven nights without saying a word, they gave their full attention to their suffering friend. This is a master class in mourning with those who mourn, which has nothing to do with fixing a problem and everything to do with just paying attention to somebody else’s needs. But as soon as they start talking, they ruin everything. They stop mourning with one who mourns and start trying to explain Job’s pain. And it becomes increasingly clear that they are not focusing on Job’s needs at all. They are trying to comfort themselves. By simply existing, Job has upended their understanding of God and morality, which says that God rewards those who do good things and punishes those who do bad things. In their minds, Job ceases to become a friend to be mourned with and becomes instead a theological problem to solve.

—Michael Austin, “The Sacrament of Attention”

Wayfare

Mourning Before Comfort

Two hundred years ago the restored gospel was swaddled in a cradle of grief. Alvin, Thadeus and Louisa, Joseph Murdock, Don Carlos, and Thomas are the names of the children that Emma and Joseph Smith lost in infancy. Most did not live a full day. The sorrow for these children, for the death of Alvin, Joseph’s older brother, and countless coreligionists …

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4 years ago · 18 likes · 8 comments · Benjamin Peters

“When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

Imagine the devastation. The complete horror. The shock of losing not just one child but all of them, all at once. Job staggered out into the street. He fell onto his knees. He tore his clothes and shaved his head and screamed, “God! I do not understand! How could you let this happen to me?”

And you probably don’t understand either, because how could God let something so terrible happen to someone so completely innocent? How is that right or helpful or loving? And those are very good questions. And you are right to ask them. But the purpose of this story is not to give you an answer. Its purpose is to ask. To really, truly, sincerely ask how is this possible? Why do cars crash, wars start, bodies break, earths quake? How can this happen? And why?

That may seem strange to say, but consider: implicitly, each attempt to rationally answer the question “Why?” is an attempt to show how the existence of evil can be reconciled with God’s existence and our own. It is an attempt to integrate the existence of evil with the existence of all that is, creating a rational whole of them by making sense of their coexistence.

But it is evil to make sense of evil. Evil and suffering do not make sense. Their existence cannot be reconciled with what is good. It is evil to make a place in the world for them, to explain them, to tame them, to no longer be horrified by them.

… While supposedly trying to solve the problem of evil and suffering, reason can take us on a detour away from the question of how to imitate the love of God. The proper question for us is “How do I respond to suffering?” rather than “Why is there suffering?”

—James Faulconer, “In Suffering, Love”

The fate of Job’s friends, who attracted God’s displeasure, shows how it is possible to miss the mark—to sin—even while attempting to champion God through our perception of His ways.

—Philip Barlow, “The Only True and Living Church?”

Theology does not prevent all hurt and anguish. No knowledge of theology can remove all pain, weakness, or nausea from all terminal cancer. Nor can it fill an empty stomach. What sound theology can do is to help those who believe it to make some sense of the suffering, of themselves, and of God, such sense that they can proceed with a measure of hope, courage, compassion, and understanding of themselves even in anguish.

There is no single theology of suffering in our Church, one framework uniform in all respects in the minds of all leaders and all other members. Though we may share the same scripture, the same revelation, prophets, and belief that God and Christ are real, we have various frameworks for putting them together and for seeing suffering, either our own or someone else’s. One person thinks God sends suffering to teach us or to test us. Another thinks God or Satan can affect only our response to the suffering, and some think it is Satan who is causing the suffering. Others think there should be no suffering at all if we are righteous and certainly no misunderstanding at all about why it is happening. These are only a few of the varieties of LDS belief about the origins of suffering, and however contradictory they be, each can be supported by fragments of scripture.

…Does it really matter what we think? Can’t we just be kind and patient, without worrying about various points of theology?

It matters. For one thing, our assumptions affect how kind and patient we are likely to become. … Many who believe God is causing the suffering will not, or feel they cannot, ask him for help or comfort at the very time they need it most.

Another of the reasons our theology of suffering matters is that we may live comfortably with a framework which has inherent holes and contradictions as long as the suffering is someone else’s or as long as our own suffering isn’t very great. But holes and contradictions have a way of becoming very important when anguish is our own or when we feel the pain of persons we care about. Job’s friends said to him:

Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands.

Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.

But now it is come upon thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled.²⁷

If, like Job, we find that the comforts we’ve offered others aren’t sufficient for our own experience, then the suffering itself, however great, is not the only problem. The problem is also that the universe and our ability to make sense of it have fallen apart, and we are without hope or trust in ourselves or in God. …

We have not the mind of God. We see through a glass darkly now and will till we meet him and ourselves face to face and “know as we are known.” There are times we must say, “I don’t know.” If we think we know everything, it is a sure sign we do not. But we are capable of learning much about this world and of considering what difference LDS doctrines can make to how we put together our experience, our diverse scriptures, our traditions, and well-supported but contradictory theological explanations. …

Of course it may seem simpler to stay on well-worn traditional ground, but God—and this is one of the most important things we believe about him—has invited us to go further, to make suffering worth the trouble and to meet it as well as we can. We can be in the process of learning to do that whatever our current limitations or circumstances. Though our search for understanding be long or incomplete, it can lead us to courage, peace, and an increasingly truer sense of ourselves and God.

—Francine Bennion, “A Latter-day Saint Theology of Suffering”

God’s perspective is greater than mine.

And as God spoke, Job could see the world as if looking through God’s own eyes. Oceans blooming, rivers pulsing like veins through the earth, A morning breaking like glass across the sky. An angel’s voice stretching over the mountains, squadrons of stars marching to time, growing, bursting into brilliance, and disappearing into less than nothing. Monsters swimming the depths of the ocean, living unseen lives in the mysterious dark. Rhinos running, dragons flying, dinosaurs falling through ages into the earth, their bones rising again in sandboxes.

And in this glimpse of eternity, Job saw something else, too. He saw himself, standing there in the eyes of God. He was a piece of the wonder. He was watched and loved and cared for. He was part of this whole crazy story. And he wasn’t just a small part, a footnote to be left out or forgotten. He was right in the very middle of it all, creation tumbling around him.

Job clapped his hands over his eyes. It was too much. And he fell to the earth exhausted. God hadn’t given him an answer. Instead, it was something more like wonder, awe, or reverence. Perhaps you could call it an understanding. Whatever it was, Job knew he could never explain it. There were no words simple or profound enough. And because it couldn’t be explained, it didn’t have to be. And, for the first time since his children died, he felt peace. Not perfect peace. But peace nonetheless. The peace we feel in the middle of a hug, or when we’re tucked into bed. It’s the peace of knowing that whatever happens during the night, we are loved.

I mean, the world is absolutely exquisite, but it’s also horrible. And how do you deal with the horrible part, exactly?

Job seems the book of the Bible that takes this quite seriously. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Job. It’s just an amazing, amazing work.

The core of the story is about this guy who’s lost everything. At a certain point when Job hits bottom, he’s alone in the world. His friends aren’t even with him, his wife isn’t with him, his children are gone, and he’s sitting on a pile of ashes scratching his diseased skin with a piece of pottery. God shows up, which is really amazing.

And he expresses awe, and love, and he talks about it being exquisite and awful all at once. By the end, Job is overwhelmed because, as awful as his life is at that moment, he looks at this opportunity he had to see the world from God’s point of view. And it reminds me of a sort of Spinoza-talk about seeing the world under the aspect of eternity. And he’s moved and astounded.

And the sentence that is sometimes translated as repenting seems to me means something else. It’s something like, “I’m comforted.” The big message for me is something like God’s world is astounding—awful, and exquisite, and astounding.

—Howard Wettstein, “The World from God’s Point of View”

Nature reduces us, humiliates us, pulverizes our ego and our sense of our own centrality. But, enlivened by God’s breath, this becomes nature’s gift, its recompense. Like Job or Moses, as we witness the creation, we discover our nothingness and our newfound and healing significance in the same moment. This does not leave us callous any longer to the suffering of nature or of our fellow beings. Once we become properly yoked with Jesus, we are expanded and become more than our atomistic selves. We become our brother’s keeper and stewards of all of His creations. The natural world brings gifts without price, recompenses of wonder and elation and solace. I know of no more adequate response to such generosity than devoted, compassionate love for every one of His creatures.

—George Handley, “Falling Into Paradise”

Everything begins in hope. All that the Gods voiced, every hopeful “And God . . .” is followed by “. . . and it was good.” What was good was that our Heavenly Parents created a world, and in that world a garden, a garden of hope for a future of fruitfulness and fecundity, of hope for a beginning where love would expand, flow outward to fill the universe, and overflow the bounds of space. And into this garden with infinite hope and love they placed our first parents, and they called it the Plan of Happiness. As premortal beings looking down from the heavens on that beginning, our hearts were filled with boundless, borderless light and love and with immense hope for what it all meant for us. …

Ours may be the most hopeful religion in the world. With its teaching of an embedded premortal hope, with its optimistic theology of the necessity of mortality, with its promise not just of exaltation but of universal resurrection and near universal glorification, and especially with its concept of loving and infinitely patient Heavenly Parents, Mormonism constitutes the ultimate hopeful news that, as Job says, God has set his heart upon us (Job 7:17). Our Parents’ ultimate hope is that we will set our hearts on and return to them—that we will make it home, back to the birthplace of all the hopes that yearn within us.

—Bob Rees, “A Perfect Brightness of Hope”

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Malachi 4:2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings. (LEB)

We are almost to the end of this storybook. And yet it feels like we’re at the beginning. More and more people are returning to Jerusalem from Persia, from Egypt, from all around the world. The family of Jacob is coming together again. And they are trying to build God’s city, a city where everyone is taken care of, where suffering is met with kindness, need with support, and sadness with love.

And it sounds like an amazing place, if only someone could ever actually build it. Will they do it this time? Well, what do you think? As the people built, one builder accidentally tripped over another, and they both got a little hurt, which made them angry, and then one of them let out a curse word, and they both were about to fight when they remembered, “Oh shoot, we are supposed to be righteous. We can’t keep acting like this.”

But guess what. Even though they wanted to be perfect, th…

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Esther 4:14 And who knows if perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (BSB)

Hadassah lived in a place called Persia. When she was young, her mother and father had died, and so she was raised by her cousin Mordecai. And even though they lived in Persia, they were not actually Persian. They were immigrants. Well, sort of. They had not chosen to come here. Their great-grandparents had been taken out of Jerusalem by an army and plopped here to help build buildings, clean streets, and paint houses. And so while Hadassah and Mordecai lived in Persia and spoke Persian, they were also part of the family of Jacob. And they were called Jews. And while some Jews had returned to rebuild Jerusalem, Hadassah and Mordecai stayed behind. They thought things would be better for them in Persia.

But sometimes Mordecai would talk about their ancestors in Jerusalem and what their life would have been like. He’d tell Hadassah the stories of Ruth, and David, and Moses. But Hadassah didn’t want to look back or care to imagine a world she’d never known. Instead, she looked out the window facing the big, beautiful palace in the center of the city and listened to the giant parties, smelled the huge feasts, heard the loud music, and dreamed of a different life. A better life. A better life for her and for Mordecai. And the best life she could imagine was here in Persia, in that palace.

That’s right, she wanted to be a princess. And who hasn’t imagined being a king or queen, and having a palace with servants? But Hadassah was not just a dreamer. She was a believer. And she trusted that one day she’d get the chance to impress the king, and he’d be so struck by her charm and beauty and wit that he’d fall in love and make her his queen.

And so when the king announced that he was hosting a contest to help him pick his next bride, Hadassah jumped for joy. “It’s going to be me!” she shouted. And people must have thought she was crazy to even try to compete. How could an orphan girl, an immigrant and refugee, become the queen of the most powerful empire in the world? There were lots and lots of perfectly fun, smart, rich, and beautiful Persians who were lined up ahead of her. Why would the king ever pick Hadassah?

Do you remember the princes who refused to eat the Babylonian food or say the Babylonian prayers? That is the opposite of what Hadassah did. She wasn’t going to miss out on her one and only opportunity. She would do anything to win. Hadassah learned to look, smell, dress, eat, and talk like a Persian.

She ate their meat and drank their drinks. She switched her linen and wool clothes for silks and velvet. She did all the fancy baths and beauty treatments. Nothing could stop her. Not naysayers, not poverty, not her ancestry. She’d give up sleep, time, and her own name if she had to. And it turns out she had to. Her name was too… foreign. It wasn’t Persian enough. And so she changed it. She started to call herself Esther, and Mordecai called her Esther, and soon everyone was calling her Esther.

And she learned to walk in high heels, and figured out dresses and colors that complemented her complexion. She practiced applying mascara, foundation, blush, and eyeliner. She learned to tell jokes and laugh loudly but not too loudly, and to eat food without spilling like she was already a princess.

On the day of the competition, as she walked through the doors of the palace, she couldn’t help but gasp. The windows were draped in rich, blue linen tied back with thick silver rings. The floor was made of marble and shells that collected into pictures that told stories all the way down the halls. There was gold and jewels on all the cups and plates, and utensils. It was even more gorgeous than she could have imagined. And she thought, “How could this ever be my home?” And for a moment, she doubted herself. But Mordecai came up behind her and whispered, “You’ve got this,” and that was just what she needed. So Esther took a deep breath and a step forward.

When it was her turn to compete, she walked with confidence. Her hair was thick. Her skin was smooth. Her face was bright. Her clothes were perfect. Her body smelled like jasmine and rose. And as she walked through the palace, she heard the contestants around her whispering together in despair because Esther looked like a queen already. And she smiled, a stunning, radiant smile. She was steps away from a new life. She took a deep breath, then turned down the hallway to see the king.

And the king immediately saw what everyone else had seen already: Esther was going to be the next queen. And so he threw a huge party and put a crown on her head. She had done it. And soon enough, they were married and Esther became a queen, joined a family, and received a country.

It was just like she dreamed. She was given a giant bedroom filled with beautiful things and lots of women to do her hair and draw her baths. Her sheets were made of the most comfortable silk. Her windows were stuffed with flowers. Her dresser was filled with jewels. She had money to spend and influence to wield. This was all even better than she’d imagined.

But in another way, it wasn’t quite what she had hoped. Because living in a palace surrounded by people who take care of you isn’t necessarily the same thing as living in a home with people who care about you. And while the king thought Esther was beautiful, he wasn’t around very much. She was never asked for her opinions about anything important. In fact, she wasn’t even allowed to go and talk to him uninvited. If she came to him with her own ideas, or thoughts, or even just to talk, she’d be kicked out of the palace and maybe even killed.

And so she spent her evenings alone and remembered her time with Mordecai, when he would tell her about life in Jerusalem, and their ancestors, and she felt an emptiness that no throne, or jewel, or wardrobe could fill. And one day, as she was looking out the window, thinking of Mordecai, she saw him. But he wasn’t coming to visit her. He was holding a poster above his head, protesting at the palace gate. Why? Esther sent a servant to find out.

As it turns out, Mordecai had a good reason. The king was planning to drive out the family of Jacob. Even though the Babylonians had taken the family of Jacob from their homes and brought them into their city to do their work, the Persians didn’t want them anymore. There were just too many of them now. They were taking good Persian jobs, joining gangs, and causing crime. They had to get rid of them, one way or another.

Mordecai cried, “You have to stop this!”

Esther swallowed hard. “What can I do about it? I’m Persian now. I’ve changed my clothes and my name, the food I eat, the laws I keep. I don’t belong to the family of Jacob anymore. I never really did.”

“Hadassah,” said Mordecai, “you are still part of the family. You can put on new clothes, change your name, and conquer the whole world, and still you would be part of our family. It’s not something you can get out of. It’s who you are. You did not become queen because you are Persian. You became queen because you’re a Jew. Your strength, your beauty, your determination, those are gifts from your parents. Remember the old story of Ruth, who left her family to take care of her mother-in-law? You are like Ruth to me. Remember David, who was a shepherd boy who became a king? You are like David. And remember Moses, who saved his people even though he didn’t think he could? You are going to need to be like Moses now. Save us.”

And Esther, who had broken every Jewish law, who had worked so hard to become the perfect Persian queen, who had spent months forgetting old habits and learning new manners, decided again to become Hadassah the Jew. She prayed and she fasted. She trusted and hoped. And then she stormed right up to the king and told him who she was. “I am Hadassah, a descendant of Kish, the great-grandson of Benjamin of the family of Jacob. And so if you’re going to get rid of the family of Jacob, I guess you’re going to have to start with me.”

The king was speechless. Esther could hear the servants whispering together. She’d come uninvited. She would be banished for sure, if not killed. But Esther did not die that day. Instead, the king was impressed with her bravery, and the family of Jacob was saved.

And as Esther walked away, she no longer felt lonely or empty or hollow. Instead, she felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time. She felt home. And she ran out to tell Mordecai the good news. She ran out through the large palace doors. She walked through the crowded streets, past mud-brick buildings, along the open sewage lines, to the neighborhood where she’d grown up, into the home where Mordecai was. And as she entered their old, broken-down apartment, she never felt more like a queen.

To purchase a hard copy of The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament, visit ForLittleSaints.com

To access the complete audiobook of The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament, become a Friend of Faith Matters by subscribing at FaithMatters.org/subscribe.

Today, we explore what it means to follow Jesus in a time when political identities increasingly compete with religious ones. Pete argues that Christians have always faced the temptation to use the Bible to back up our own opinions rather than allowing the life of Christ to reshape us. He challenges us to consider how certainty may be blinding, explains that a healthy patriotism deepens our love of neighbor, and emphasizes the revolutionary nature of Jesus’s love for those on the margins and calls us to consider what all of this means for Christians today.

Pete has spent decades at the intersection of faith and politics, serving in three Republican administrations, including as a speechwriter and director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives to President George W. Bush. He’s now a contributing writer for The Atlantic and The New York Times. Throughout his career, he’s consistently challenged himself and others to think with moral seriousness, intellectual honesty, and Christian charity.

This conversation invited us to think more deeply about where our deepest allegiances belong. We found it thoughtful, grounding, and so worthwhile, and we hope you will too. And with that, we’ll jump right into our conversation with Peter Wehner.

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The Lord puts me in situations where I can bless others.

Community in America has grown harder to find. The spaces and institutions that used to gather neighbors together are in decline, while loneliness, depression, and other social ills are on the rise. Relearning how to commit ourselves to a place and a group of people — especially our neighbors — is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and others. This episode of Article 13 offers practical guidance for how we can make these commitments and first-hand accounts of how joyful it can be when we do:

Article 13: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Yet when God tells Peter at the beginning of building Christ’s church that “the net gathereth of every kind,” he’s warning us that there are going to be some weird fish! There are so many ways to be a weird fish: maybe you are older or younger than most of the people in your ward, maybe you are disabled, part of a racial or ethnic minority in your ward, poorer or richer than most people there, or your political views are different, or, like me, you have been divorced and are rubbish at pickleball. Human limits of attention, patience, affection and—especially—time can make friendship feel scarce. It is a hard truth that we have made covenants that require us to love more than we are able to, and to be committed even when we don’t feel loved or comfortable. Our wards, our priesthood quorums and Relief Societies, are made up entirely of people trying and failing and trying again to love by covenant.

The saving truth is that, by virtue of having made covenants with God, we each carry the deepest kind of belonging within ourselves. Knowing that, we are freed from competing for scarce social capital; we can take delight in the variety of relationships that are offered to us by virtue of our covenant of belonging.

—Kristine Haglund, “Covenants & Contracts”

Pride and anger can lead to downfall.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we covenant to live the laws of sacrifice and consecration. Being serious about these covenants leads us to practice sine proprio, progressing to the point where we are willing to let go of our white-knuckled grip on prosperity, power, what we deserve, and what we possess. We must be willing to “imagine a Zion society, wrestle with what that society consists of, and imagine how we could be part of that society.”

—Jenny Richards, “The Promised Land: A Cautionary Tale”

There is a wisdom higher than zeal in restraint, in the measured response, in due process, and in truth spoken with the potency of a lowered voice.

Our modern culture is saturated with zealotry. Think of the burgeoning genres of vigilante fiction or revenge thrillers in literature, television, and film; think of the polarized rhetoric of social media; think of the scorched-earth partisanship we see in today’s political theater, and the grotesque displays of bravado with actual weapons, real armed forces, and lives at stake. If we suppose God is pleased with such behavior, with such zealotry, then we may expect soon to find that we have no more need of the still small voice at all.

—Morgan Davis, “Zeal and the Still Small Voice”

Fasting shows that I trust and rely on the Lord.

When I fast, I still want the ‘now’ answer to my prayer. I want the cancer cured. I want the infertility to be resolved. I want chronic pain removed. I want death to be staved off, and those who have died to return to be with me.

And if any of those things happen today or tomorrow, I will give thanks for that grace, and confess the hand of the Lord.

But if not, I no longer have any reason to consider my fast a dead work. I see it now as a powerful physical way to manifest the dual Christian imperatives to mourn with those who mourn (Mosiah 18:9), and express steadfast assurance that the blessed hope is coming (Heb. 6:18–19). I’m making myself vulnerable, voluntarily walking into the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–2), hungry, waiting for the blessings of the fulness of Christ’s Kingdom to arrive in my life in whatever way they come.

I’m expressing hope that in due time, after a period of frustration and pain, after we “cry for help…he will say, ‘Here I am’” (Isaiah 58:9 NRSV:UE), and we will all feast together as complete, joyful persons in the presence of the Bridegroom. I can experience the peace of renewed hope now, even as I mourn.³ Indeed, though it was obscured from me for so long, I now see clearly this passage from the Doctrine and Covenants: “Verily, this is fasting and prayer, or in other words, rejoicing and prayer” (D&C 59:14).

—David L Tayman III, “Then Shall They Fast”

Doing the right thing often requires great courage.

Most communities leave the nature of relationships ambiguous. We only discover the truth in moments of testing, when something disrupts the status quo: when a teammate refuses to go along, a member questions direction, or rules are broken.

Our communities—those we’re born into, those we join, those we interact with from a distance, and those we resist—shape who we become, and how we can shape them. We can reclaim freedom and responsibility in those communities—an effort that, if practiced at scale, will reshape the character of our society.

—Luke Burgis, “Becoming a Solid-Self”

We are mindful of the ways migrants and refugees have shaped the restored gospel of Jesus Christ; indeed, migrant stories are foundational to our faith. Scripture stories in our holy canon emphasize the plight of the migrant and refugee, and of God’s help in their lives. From Abraham and Sarah’s sojourns as a “stranger[s]” in foreign lands (Genesis 23:3-4), to the exodus of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt; to Ruth choosing to worship with her mother-in-law’s people, to Esther advocating for her endangered diaspora; to the escape of the holy family into Egypt, to the entire Lehite tradition of the Book of Mormon and their various migrations and challenges within the Americas, all serve as witnesses of the precarity and dignity of the human condition. They also bear witness of God’s abounding love in whatever circumstances His children find themselves in.

—Megan Armknecht, “Day of the Refugee”

One day—I can point to the exact place I stood in my bedroom, next to my Great-Grandma Esther’s hand-me-down jewelry box—I was pondering some scriptural examples of unflinching faith, including the biblical Esther, who declared, “if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16). There were also Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who knew that God had the ability to deliver them from the fiery furnace, but also knew that if He didn’t, they would remain faithful (Dan. 3:17–18); and Mary, who with absolute sub- mission said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

And I asked myself, if I got to the point where I simply could not find the divine communion and spiritual healing I sought, what would I do? Would I give up on the Lord? Would I turn elsewhere?

Almost as I thought this, in a holy, perhaps mystical experience which I can only call gracing, I knew that I would never turn my back on the Lord. It was simultaneously a decision, a feeling, a direction, and a command. It was also a scripture and a hymn:

On the surface, these words barely touch the significance of the experience for me; I admit they seem wholly unextraordinary. But the experience itself was fire. It was unclear what part of this lightning bolt stemmed from me and what part from God. In some ways, its intensity convinced me that it could not have emerged from my weak self, which was entirely too fickle and frail for such bold declarations. But in another sense, this conviction seemed to stem from the most authentic part of myself— the spiritual core that knew God intimately, even through veiled vision.But also, in a strange inexplicable way, the demarcation between me and God seemed irrelevant. In communion with God, we were one and the same—indistinguishable. It was a duet, a dance, a covenant: a gift given and a gift received, a promise made and a promise trusted. It wasn’t submission; it was collaboration and union.After the long wrestle, like Jacob, I had prevailed (Gen. 32:28). Like Sarah, I laughed (Gen. 18:12). I had been given power from God and all was new.

—Hannah Packard Crowther, “Gracing”

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Nehemiah 2:18 And they said, ‘Let us rise up and build.’ So they strengthened their hands for the good work.

This story starts in Babylon. And the family of Jacob is trying to continue, to remember who they are, and who they were, and what they were supposed to be. And so they liked to tell stories about their history, their ancestors, Jerusalem, and God. But sometimes the stories made them sad. Because they were telling themselves stories about Moses delivering their family from Pharaoh, and yet they were captive in Babylon. And they were telling stories about David and his city, Jerusalem, and yet they had no leader, and Jerusalem was in ruins.

And they pictured God speaking like he was talking to a friend, then guiding the family of Jacob by firelight through the wilderness. They imagined their ancestors laughing and dancing and feasting together during holidays. They remember all the grand stories, the epic sagas, the important events of the last two thousand years. And they thought…

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Daniel 3:17-18 If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.

The destruction of Jerusalem happened slowly at first, and then all at once. It started with intimidation. The Babylonian army marched all through the city of Jerusalem and waved their glinting swords, and pounded their hard shields, saying, “We are strong! You are weak!” After that, they took the family of Jacob’s money, collecting tributes and taxes. Then they forced the people to speak the Babylonian language and to practice the Babylonian religion. “You are conquered,” they said, “Now you must learn to do things our way.”

And the family of Jacob didn’t like this. They knew that if they stopped speaking their own language and telling their own stories and practicing their own religion, they’d soon forget all about Abraham, Moses, Rebekah, Rachel, and the others. They’d forget they were ever slaves in Egypt or how God delivered them. They’d forget about Adam and Eve, Noah and the rainbow. They’d forget about the angel that came for Ishmael or the promise given to Isaac. They’d forget about how their family was split apart and came back together. They’d forget about water coming out of rocks and manna in the wilderness.

And so the family of Jacob told their children, “We are going to have a rebellion. We’re going to fight back.” This was a very hard decision because Babylon had the most powerful army in the world. And fighting against Babylon meant certain death. But there was something that scared them more than death: extinction.

The parents told their children, “If we die, you will have to carry on without us. You will become the memory keepers. The family of Jacob will live on in you. Our city might be destroyed, but we will continue as long as you keep speaking our language, practicing our religion, and telling our stories.”

And then the parents did something really brave and really dangerous. They took their swords and yelled, “Babylon, we aren’t going to do what you say any longer.”

And the Babylonian army came and beat down the rebellion. The temple was toppled. And the leaders retreated to the palace. But the palace was destroyed, all the leaders were killed, and their children, the princes of Jerusalem, were gathered and tied with ropes, and dragged across the wilderness, over mountains, and back to Babylon.

As they traveled, the children imagined all the terrible things that would happen to them when they arrived in Babylon. Maybe they’d be put into cages or tortured or forced to fight each other or who knows what else. And so they cried and prayed and struggled to sleep, and cried and prayed some more.

But when they arrived in Babylon, they were not thrown into a damp prison or spat on or laughed at. Instead, they were given nice rooms, lots of food, and interesting books to read. And tutors to help them learn the new language. There were playgrounds, friends, pools, and so much to do. They couldn’t believe their luck. This was turning out better than they could have hoped.

But it was not as lucky as it seemed. You see, the Babylonians were trying to distract the children so that they’d forget all about their life in Jerusalem and their families and their language and their traditions. Because although the army had destroyed the city of Jerusalem, Babylon still needed to stamp out the idea of Jerusalem. Until the memory was gone, the city would continue to exist. And as long as it existed, it continued to be a threat. Just the memory of Jerusalem was enough to cause another revolution.

So they gave the princes new Babylonian names. And they fed them Babylonian food and didn’t let them pray to their God, celebrate their holidays, practice their religion, sing their old songs, or tell their stories. And they hoped this would be enough to make the children forget.

But the children did not forget. They remembered their fathers and mothers. Their parents had died to preserve Jerusalem. And now the children carried that memory. They knew that the city, the culture, and the whole family of Jacob were on the brink of extinction. And they were not going to let it go so easily.

And so the children refused to eat the Babylonian food, worship the Babylonian god, or practice the Babylonian traditions. They sang their own songs, celebrated their own holidays, told their own stories, and prayed to their own God. And when the king asked them why they were not fitting into their new life, they said, “Our parents would not approve. We are the memory keepers.”

The king laughed and said, “This is ridiculous. I could have thrown you in prison or had you killed. But instead, I brought you into my own palace and am offering you my own food. I’ve given you books to read, teachers to teach you, and nannies to care for you. I’ve done more for you than your parents ever could. So why worry about what your parents would think? They’re gone. They can’t help you now. But I’m helping you. So show some gratitude.”

But the princes just said, “We are grateful that you didn’t kill us and that you’ve treated us so nicely. But if we don’t honor our parents, live our traditions, tell our stories, and worship our God, we will forget where we came from. And whenever any of us forget, there is one less person keeping it alive.

“You have changed our names, but you cannot change who we are. We are princes of Jerusalem. And we will always be who we were born to be. We did not choose our family, but they are ours, and nothing can replace them. And we cannot deny our beliefs. They are part of us, even if they are not cool or convenient.”

But this only made the king angrier. “You come from a weak family and a silly religion,” he shouted as he tore down some curtains. “Your family couldn’t save itself against my army. None of my soldiers were struck by lightning when they tore your temple down or took your gold. If your God had any power, if he cared at all about your family, he would have stopped my soldiers. But he didn’t. He abandoned your family, and your family abandoned you when they decided to die fighting me. And so here I am trying to raise you to be so much better than them. You are Babylonian now. We are your family, I am your king, and this is your people.” The king gestured wildly out the window.

“My palace is your palace,” he shouted, thumping his fist on the table, “and my god is your god. And this should be really good news for you, because I have a much bigger, better, stronger, longer-lasting tradition than you ever had. So join us, and forget about your silly, backwards upbringing. You’re much better off as a child of Babylon.”

But the princes shook their heads. And this made the king even more furious. So he called in the soldiers, “We can’t keep people around who refuse to be a part of us. We can’t allow other ideas and other loyalties. That’s how rebellions start. That’s how nations fall. The memory of Jerusalem must be killed one way or another. And if you won’t let it die, then we will have to kill you. If that’s what you want, then I’ll throw you in this fire and turn you into ash.”

The soldiers seized the princes as the princes replied, “You might be right. Our God did not save our city. Our family lost the battle. Our people have fallen, our temple is destroyed, our kingdom is in shambles. But we are who we are, and we believe what we believe, and we know what we know. And we remember our parents who died for this memory, and we have the names they gave us. And we believe that our God will save us from the furnace. But if not, we cannot be anyone else but who we are. And we are princes of Jerusalem.”

The king had had enough. He told the soldiers to throw three of the princes into the furnace. And the princes closed their eyes, and prepared to feel their bodies burn up from beneath them. But instead, they felt pleasantly warm. God had come for them. He came for them like he hadn’t come for Jerusalem or their parents or their people. And he saved their lives.

And when the fire didn’t work, the king threw one of the princes into a lion’s den, but the same thing happened. God came for the boy and protected him too. And the king learned that he could not simply replace their families or their names or their faith. And their God was not silly or weak or stupid. Their God was powerful. And their lineage was noble. And while their city was gone, and their people were scattered, and their homes burned, the memory remained strong and clear and bright. And memory is a powerful thing. And with their memory, the family of Jacob continued.

They’d persisted through slavery in Egypt, they’d passed over oceans and deserts, and now through lion’s dens and into a fiery furnace. And somehow, they were a people that kept existing. And the king came to know that this scattered group of people would continue for a thousand thousand years. They’d outlive him and his kingdom. And other kingdoms. They’d become more powerful than any tyrant or dictator. They’d take over the world someday. Not with soldiers, but like a stone rolling down a mountain that hits another stone and another stone and another stone until a landslide cascades and covers the valley below. Or like a forest grows over a mountain, or like snow covers the land with a billion tiny miracles.

Because they knew who they were. They were the family of Jacob, the city of Jerusalem. And that family and its city could never really be destroyed, because it was not built with mortar and stone, but was composed in the sacred places of their hearts. And they carried it with them, tucked beneath their ribs. And they passed it down from parent to child, parent to child.

And it has been passed to you. You may not have chosen this family or this faith. But it is often those things you do not choose that hold onto you when you are cold, that keep you going when you are lonely, and come for you when you are lost. Kings die, and lions are tamed. People’s minds go wild, their bodies give out, and their wealth dries up. But our names remain. And our people and our stories continue. And you are part of that story. You are princes and princesses of Jerusalem. You are memory keepers. The city lives in you. And someday, when there are enough of us, we will bring it back to the earth, and we will pluck it out of our hearts, and place it on the ground. And our memory will cease to be a memory, because it will be the city we live in.

To purchase a hard copy of The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament, visit ForLittleSaints.com

To access the complete audiobook of The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament, become a Friend of Faith Matters by subscribing at FaithMatters.org/subscribe.

Our guest is Pete Enns, a well-known bible scholar and the Abram S. Clemens professor of Bible Studies at Eastern University in Pennsylvania.

In recent years, Pete has become well known for several highly popular books, including How the Bible Actually Works, The Bible Tells Me So, and the book we discussed with him in this episode: The Sin of Certainty. In addition to his research and writing, Pete co-hosts the podcast The Bible for Normal People.

In The Sin of Certainty, Pete opens up about his own faith journey, including what he calls “uh-oh” moments — those moments that, as Pete says, “wreak havoc with our neatly arranged thoughts of God, the world, and our place in it.”

He makes the argument that a faith preoccupied with correct thinking can quickly become exhausting as we try to force disruptive experiences into our existing frameworks. Pete insists that there’s a different way—the way of listening to those moments and learning from them, even letting them change us—and discovering a faith that shifts from rigid certainty about God to a more open, resilient trust in God.

This conversation has really stayed with us over the years, and we are so excited to share it with you now.

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The Lord inspires people to accomplish His purposes.

On the other hand in the Bible and Book of Mormon human beings are presented in the ways that most of us feel, day to day: struggling, frustrated, well-intentioned but flawed, determined but acutely aware of our own frailties. Moses protests that he cannot possibly do what God asks of him. Nephi obsesses about his failures. Mary confesses she cannot possibly imagine how God’s promise to save humanity is possible.

But in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon what we might call “religion” is something that God instigates. In scripture, religion is something that God does rather than something human beings do. Instead, God reaches out. God seeks humanity. The main character of the Bible is not Adam or Moses or Paul; the main character is God. The main character of the Book of Mormon is not Nephi or Alma or Mormon; it is God. The main character in Christianity is not us; it is God. And the point for human beings is not that we need to work harder on personal self-improvement; it is that we need to understand the world of justice and mercy that God is creating around us.

—Matthew Bowman, “Fruit on a Barren Tree”

Sometimes in the Church we like to think of ourselves as special or different. I remember learning very early that we are a peculiar people. We are blessed with knowledge, while “the World” sits in darkness. They need us to bring them the truth, to help them change their ways. We are the ones who have something to offer Them. But when I read Christ’s story of the Good Samaritan, I see something different. I see the importance of an outsider perspective. I see an other who has something to give. Maybe we aren’t the only peculiar people. Maybe heaven and earth are both populated by scores of peculiar peoples, each treasured by God, each with special callings that have been informed by their talents, skills, and cultures.

—Jeanine Bee, “Peculiar Peoples”

The house of the Lord is a place of joy.

Find everything we’ve published in Wayfare on the temple experience here.

In this reading, as we attend the temple, we are positioned as travelers. The Lord of the house welcomes us in and offers us a bath not because he is put off by our dirtiness but because he wants us to rest and refresh ourselves after a tiring journey. The dust on our feet is not a sign of failure; it is an inevitable part of travel by foot. Keeping the house clean may be a byproduct of the bath, but its primary purpose is to make us feel welcome. The Lord’s concern is our comfort, not the cleanliness of his house.

After a refreshing bath, the Lord honors us by anointing our heads with precious oil. He wants to make it abundantly clear that we are welcome, that our presence in his house brings him joy. This contextualized reading invites us to see ourselves not merely as passers-by whom the Lord deigns to temporarily shelter because he feels duty-bound to take care of us, but rather as inheriting children, royalty, returning to the place of our upbringing. There will be feasting and rejoicing to celebrate our return.

—David Sabey, “The Lord’s Welcome”

Modern-day temples serve tiny fractions of the world’s population, yet cost billions of dollars to build and maintain. And the service the temples provide is spiritual—not temporal—in nature. Many of the places where the Church has announced new temples have high rates of poverty, famine, and instability. Shouldn’t Church funds go toward food and shelter for all, before going to granite and stained glass for a few?

These questions are warranted. They’re urgent.

In the wrestle that must accompany questions about the worth of temple-building, I believe it is critical to incorporate global perspectives.

—Greer Bates Cordner, “Deliverance”

Follow the new Faith Matters podcast about the temple, Sanctuary:

Sanctuary: Discovering the Temple

A Faith Matters podcast for curious, open, & honest conversations as we explore and re-discover the temple together.

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God has an important work for me to do.

But there are not two Churches and I am not divided. There is one Church, and I claim it as my own, ashamed of what is shameful and proud of what is praiseworthy. My loyalty does not arise out of a calculation that the pros outweigh the cons, but out of reciprocity. In addition to the gift of Christ’s atonement, which he gives freely to all, I owe a debt to my sisters and brothers. Fellow Latter-day Saints have taught me to want to be good, protected me from danger, and helped make real the things I wanted to be true but could not see.

—Melissa Inouye, “A Church That Is Real”

While it is not our place to determine the revelatory direction the Church will take, it is our place to hope, and it is our place to make those hopes known—especially to our priesthood leaders. We can look forward to a day when women and men more completely and effectively partner in the work of salvation. Even without knowing precisely how we will arrive at this better place, I believe that longing, hoping, and praying for such a day—and being candid about those hopes, especially in consecrated conversations with our priesthood leaders—is a powerful way that those of us who serve “out in the periphery” of the body of Christ can hasten the day when women are more fully empowered to fully partner in bringing about the Lord’s vision of Zion.

—Tyler Johnson, “A Church for All of Us”

I am blessed when I study the scriptures.

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Job 42:5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. (KJV)

As the family of Jacob sat and wept by the waters of Babylon, they thought about all the terrible things they had seen happen. The city of Jerusalem in flames. Families torn apart. People killed. Children traumatized. And as they thought, they started to ask questions like, “Why had everything gone so wrong?” and “Why had the world fallen apart so completely?” and “Why did God let this happen?” But no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t make it make sense. And as they were struggling to make sense of everything, the family of Jacob remembered an old story about a man named Job. It goes like this:

Job was very rich because everything in his life was precious to him. Every single one of his cows and sheep and camels and fields of grain was numbered and cared for and loved. He loved his children. He loved his home. He loved his wife. He loved God like a friend. And Job was kind, and good, and …

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Ezekiel 34:11-12 For the Lord GOD says this: “Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them. As a shepherd cares for his flock … so I will care for My sheep and will rescue them. (NASB)

Ezekiel was a man on a mission. And his mission was to get a job working in the temple. He had spent fifteen years studying to become a temple priest, which is longer than all the years of elementary, middle, and high school combined. He was so close to finishing his education and was just about to start his new career the moment he turned thirty. But before he came of age, the Babylonians arrived and everything changed.

It was sort of like leaving one school in the middle of the year and starting all over at another one. Only it was worse, a lot worse. Because Ezekiel wasn’t just switching schools or moving with his family to a new town to start a new job. He was taken away from his home by an actual army that bound his arms and made him walk hundreds of miles.

And what he saw along the road to Babylon gave him nightmares. The soldiers were not only strong but also cruel. He’d seen them let women and children starve to death. They threw rocks to hurt people and spat on them, and called them names. And so by the time Ezekiel arrived in Babylon, he already hated it.

But Ezekiel wasn’t just angry with Babylon. He was angry with his own people, too. He thought the family of Jacob had brought this tragedy upon themselves. There were warnings, so many warnings. There were prophets, so many prophets. All they had to do was listen and be better, and this would never have happened. But they didn’t listen, and they weren’t better. The family of Jacob fought and lied and cheated and oppressed the poor and worshiped idols and broke God’s commandments over and over again.

And so it was no wonder that God had not protected them from Babylon. Why would he? They were not wonderful. They were not even special. They were just normal, rotten, selfish people, like everyone else.

And so one day in Babylon, while Ezekiel was feeling particularly sad about everything, he went for a walk, sat against a tree by the side of a river, and cried. You see, he was sad because it was his thirtieth birthday, and no one was there to give him a cake or light candles. And as he cried, he imagined what he would be doing if he were back home.

He’d be preparing for his first day as a priest at the temple. It would have been the culmination of all his work, study, and effort. And people would come to see him perform the rituals. And they’d clap and maybe talk about what it all means and how it points to God.

But now, he’d never present anything for anybody. Now, he was a stranger in a strange land with no ritual to perform and no temple to perform it in. And as he was crying and feeling sad, that sadness seeped into his body, and he must have fallen asleep because he started to dream. And in his dream God spoke to him.

And even though it was just a dream, it felt real, so real. More real than any dream he’d ever had. Ezekiel felt warm, bright, powerful, and loved, just like you feel on your birthday when your family gathers round to sing you a song. And when Ezekiel woke up, he thought that it must have been sort of close to an approximation of what it might kind of have felt like to have been a priest at the temple, basking in the warmth of God’s presence.

And Ezekiel woke from that dream with a new hope for the future and a new vision for himself. Maybe he would never be a priest at the temple, but that didn’t mean he’d never perform for a crowd. So that night, Ezekiel began to pray to God for inspiration, and God inspired him to write plays — small one-man performances he could do on a street corner. And people came to see this new, first-of-its-kind entertainment.

Ezekiel started with something simple. He began by building a miniature set of Jerusalem, and then just as he finished the model, he tore it apart. It was dramatic and shocking, and the message was straightforward. The people clapped and talked together about the symbolism. And for a moment, Ezekiel smiled.

Inspired by his success, he tried something more daring. It was a long-form public art performance. It went like this: Ezekiel lay on his side, ate food cooked over dried dung, and kept doing this for weeks and weeks. The commitment to his art brought new crowds who came to see just how long he could keep doing this. But as the performance dragged on, as the weeks stretched into months, the audience dwindled.

So Ezekiel returned to a more traditional length while incorporating the personal commitment that had become the hallmark of his art. He was his own canvas, his own puppet, his own prop. This time, he shaved the hair off his head and then cut that hair into little pieces, and threw the pieces in the wind. Everyone watched as the hair dispersed into a million shards over Babylon. And the people wondered at how quickly it all disappeared. And then they thought about how they were like that hair, scattered over the earth. Whatever it all meant, they enjoyed how it made them think.

Then, Ezekiel decided to try a surprise performance. Just as the sun was setting, he broke out of the side of his home and ran away into the night. It was a hit. The people cheered and talked for a long time about what it might have meant. “I guess we will never know,” they said. But to Ezekiel, the art communicated a clear message, so he came back and told them what the play had symbolized.

And in all his performances, Ezekiel reminded the people about Jerusalem. He wanted them to remember where they had come from, because he had dreams of going back someday and rebuilding the city: the homes, the streets, and of course the temple. Except in his dreams, it was all newer and bigger and prettier than it had ever been. And the people were better, too, better than the family of Jacob had ever been.

And in his dream city, Ezekiel saw a river coming out of the temple. And the river spread across the world. And as it spread, the water healed oceans and brought trees, and fish, and life wherever it went. And the river was growing ever wider and deeper. First to the ankles, then to the knees, then hips, then chest, and finally too deep to do anything but swim.

And Ezekiel called his dream city, “The Lord is There,” because that’s what he hoped for more than anything. He wanted to feel it again. That feeling he had beside the river, on his thirtieth birthday. Even if it was just sort of close to an approximation of what it might kind of be like to be with God, it was enough.

And I wonder if maybe, just maybe, Ezekiel did not just dream God was with him on his birthday when he was sad and all alone. Maybe it really was God. Maybe it was more than an approximation of sort of what it might kind of have been like at the temple in Jerusalem. Maybe God followed the family of Jacob out of the temple, through Jerusalem, and all the way to Babylon.

Maybe God wasn’t trapped in a past golden age or some future paradise. Maybe God was not just the God of beautifully perfect people. Maybe he didn’t just care about the most righteous and most deserving. Maybe he even cared about the people who were only just approaching an estimation of being kind of close to good enough. Maybe even dried bones were not beyond his reach. Maybe he was coming for the family of Jacob. Maybe he already had. Maybe he was there now, weeping with them by the rivers of Babylon.

To purchase a hard copy of The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament, visit ForLittleSaints.com

To access the complete audiobook of The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament, become a Friend of Faith Matters by subscribing at FaithMatters.org/subscribe.

Together with their spouses, Patrick Mason and Chad Ford, Melissa and Amanda have dedicated years to the work of building peace in families, communities, and faith spaces. But in this conversation, they invite us to consider the foundation of all lasting peace: the quiet, often difficult work of cultivating peace within ourselves.

Drawing from their work as therapists and educators, Amanda and Melissa offer a vision of emotional wholeness that challenges many of the assumptions our culture rewards. Together we explore how striving, productivity, and constant achievement may inadvertently shape our sense of worth, and ask why so many of us find it so difficult to rest—even when we desperately need it. They ask us to become more fluent in the wisdom of our bodies and to rediscover rest—not as something we earn, but as both a spiritual practice and a commandment.

Again and again, they remind us that spiritual formation isn’t a race toward perfection, that every season of our lives can become part of who we’re growing into. We hope this conversation helps you notice the ways you might be being invited into more rest and presence and less striving.

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When I pine for my phone, I can feel it on my skin, a tingle akin to a lover walking into the room. Patricia Lockwood calls it “the portal,” glowing with the promise of significance and connection. Smartphones act like the enchanted Mirror of Erised in…

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Trusting in God will bring me peace.

 God loves us first. We know that. He tells us that over and over, whether we listen or not. He loves us first. He chooses His children first, before we do or are anything. … I think the striving comes from the fact that we don't trust God  when He says that. We don't trust  that our heavenly parents love us anyway, and so… we still believe that there are things that we have to do to earn love.

—Melissa Mason, “Permission to Rest”

Jesus’s way is the gospel of “love and peace, of patience and long-suffering, of forbearance and forgiveness, of kindness and good deeds, of charity” in a world that is often filled with hatred and war, impatience and victimization, and impulsiveness and resentment. Jesus’s way is proactive: He invites us to de-escalate conflict and move toward healing and reconciliation.

—Chad Ford, “The Peace We Need”

I can defend the truth, even when it’s unpopular.

Benjamin’s example also tells us that our preaching shouldn’t browbeat people into obedience. We should never assume it is enough to just teach the truth. We need to facilitate experiences that inspire gratitude for God. As John said, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). As a community of believers, we bear a special responsibility to make that love palpable for everyone within the walls of our churches, our homes, and in our communities. Commandments learned in an unloving or unjust or judgmental environment where our agency is not respected and we are not unconditionally loved can be a form of spiritual abuse. How many of God’s children have been lost because of the pride, arrogance, or controlling manipulations of unrighteous dominion? If any church community fails to demonstrate God’s unconditional love unambiguously, people will go elsewhere, to a place where they find love and acceptance. We simply cannot afford to obscure God’s mercy or his quickness to forgive by suggesting that God might love the strictly obedient just a little bit more than the rest of us.

—George B. Handley, “Obedience as Gratitude”

But often, the more universal teachings cause us to stay silent… “There’s another way to get there,” we tell ourselves. When teaching this principle to young people I’ve often drawn Pac-Man-style ghosts with missionary name tags to symbolize missionaries teaching the gospel in the Spirit World, subconsciously telling myself that someone can accept the gospel later. Not long ago, a stranger stopped to help me change a blown-out tire on the side of the road. As we made small talk and loosened lug nuts, he said he was about to read Jeremiah for his Bible study group. I easily could have asked him, “Would you like to know more about the premortal life hinted at in Jeremiah 1:5?” But I talked myself out of it, not wanting to impose my ideas on his faith, which obviously worked for him.

…Shouting for joy is the mode of a true disciple and missionary. It outshines fear-driven gimmicks and laissez-faire silence. It also gives us new reasons for sharing the gospel now, rather than trusting the divine plan to make the gospel available to someone later. In fact, the very truths that we sometimes use to excuse our silence may be the best reasons for sharing the gospel now.

—Bryan Gentry, “Do All Roads Lead to Winnemucca?”

In difficult times, I can turn to God and His prophets.

Our modern culture is saturated with zealotry. Think of the burgeoning genres of vigilante fiction or revenge thrillers in literature, television, and film; think of the polarized rhetoric of social media; think of the scorched-earth partisanship we see in today’s political theater, and the grotesque displays of bravado with actual weapons, real armed forces, and lives at stake. If we suppose God is pleased with such behavior, with such zealotry, then we may expect soon to find that we have no more need of the still small voice at all. Perhaps it has already ceased to strive with us, having found even less it could teach us than it taught Elijah.

In the Book of Mormon, we read of peoples like ourselves in need of repentance who experience fearsome manifestations of fires, earthquakes, and clouds of darkness, and after these “a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper” that “did pierce even to the very soul” (Helaman 5:30; and compare 3 Nephi 11:3–5). The voice, of course, is the voice of Christ, and at first it can be hard to understand. Why? Is it because Christ mumbles? Or is it because his is “not a harsh voice, neither . . . a loud voice”—the only kind of voice we now have ears to hear? Perhaps his voice will remain unintelligible or even unheard until we finally settle down and listen with renewed humility—with hearts and ears and eyes pointed “steadfastly towards heaven, from whence the sound [comes]” rather than in whatever other direction our polarized environment has dragged the needle of our inner compass.

President Dallin H. Oaks, in his first extended remarks after becoming the president of the Church, focused on the pointed message of his predecessor, Russell M. Nelson, becoming a second prophetic witness that “in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.” President Oaks added his own warning: “You live in a season in which the adversary has become so effective at disguising truth that if you don’t have the Holy Ghost, you will be deceived. Many obstacles lie ahead. The distractions will be many.”

If the still small voice—the quiet “voice of perfect mildness”—is a sound we can only hear when we are listening, are we listening?

—Morgan Davis, “Zeal and the Still Small Voice”

Pride leads to destruction.

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we covenant to live the laws of sacrifice and consecration. Being serious about these covenants leads us to practice sine proprio, progressing to the point where we are willing to let go of our white-knuckled grip on prosperity, power, what we deserve, and what we possess. We must be willing to “imagine a Zion society, wrestle with what that society consists of, and imagine how we could be part of that society.”

—Jenny Richards, “The Promised Land: A Cautionary Tale”

Neither we nor Jesus were born into a world of fairness, justice, or peace. Nevertheless, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, offers a way through the destructive conflicts that plagued his day and ours. Jesus responded to the conflict that engulfed his world in ways that would bring more than a temporary respite from the ravages of war and enmity. He taught that the root cause of conflict derived from the human heart. He was concerned that “because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matt. 24:11–12 NIV). Jesus was interested in ushering in a new kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. Yes, he would be a Messiah. Yes, he would offer liberation and salvation, not in the way we want, but in the way we need.

—Chad Ford, “The Peace We Need”

I can be a peacemaker.

Interfaith work, in an important way, is simply to stop pretending, and admit the interconnected state of affairs. And this coming together is less often like the conversions we hear at testimony meetings and much more like sharing a room with a brother. There will be disagreements and differences, even genetic differences, but also an inseparable, undeniable connection. So much of being a brother is getting past pride and jealousy so we can be a pillar when the world is crumbling, to share meals and conversations after a hard day, to have a place to spend holidays. Interfaith work, ultimately, is the work of bringing God’s family together as the family we actually are.

—Joshua Sabey, “Becoming God’s Family”

For many of us, the peace we want is passive. We want peace to be a state of being, a feeling; we want someone or something to change so that we experience peace. And we seek the kind of justice that avenges, punishes, and destroys.

But Jesus offers us an active peace rooted in how we see and act in the world. When we experience conflict, he calls on us to change. When he calls for justice, he calls for the type of justice that restores, reconciles, and makes us whole. It is in this frame of mind that I am brought to think about the paradox of a heavenly king finding warmth on his first night on Earth in a meager manger, in an otherwise little-known town.

…Jesus came into the world, not to give us the peace we want. Instead, he came to give us the peace we need.

—Chad Ford, “The Peace We Need”

Waymakers

Inspired by the skill, spirit, and the example of Jesus, Waymakers forms peacemakers through transformative training and constructive engagement with conflict.

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Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. (KJV)

This is a story about a man named Jeremiah who lived through the end of the world. Jeremiah was a happy boy born in a little town. And while he was still very young, God spoke to him.

“Jeremiah!” God said, “I have a plan for you. It’s time that you become my prophet. Now go to the city of Jerusalem, and I will tell you what to say.”

“But I’m just a child!” Jeremiah cried.

“You don’t remember me,” God said, “but I’ve known you since before you were born, and I have loved you from the beginning of time. So don’t worry about being a child or young, or inexperienced. You are older than you can imagine. And I know what you’re capable of.”

Jeremiah felt honored. Not everyone gets such a personal and powerful compliment straight from God. And that filled Jeremiah with a lot of confidence. And so he packed a bag and strapped on his sandals, and walk…

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