HOLY GROUND

"We bear grave responsibility for the purity of our motives when some trusting heart has offered us entrance. Anyone who stands on that threshold stands on holy ground......"

- Bruce C. Hafen

COMING HOME

"When we return to our real home, it will be with the 'mutual approbation' of those who reign in the 'royal courts on high'. There we will find beauty such as mortal 'eye hath not seen'; we will hear sounds of surpassing music which mortal 'ear hath not heard'. Could such a regal home coming be possible without the anticipatory arrangements of a Heavenly Mother? Meanwhile, there are no separate paths back to home. Just one straight and narrow way, at the end of which, though we arrive trailing tears, we shall at once be 'drenched in joy'".

- Neal A Maxwell, The Women of God,  Ensign May 1978

REDEMPTION

 

O Thou in whose presence my soul takes delight
On whom in affliction I call,
My comfort by day and my song in the night
My hope, my salvation, my all.

Where dost thou at noontide resort with thy sheep
To feed on the pastures of love?
Say why in the valley of death should I weep,
Or alone in the wilderness rove?

O why should I wander an alien from Thee
Or cry in the desert for bread?
Thy foes will rejoice when my sorrows they'll see
And smile at the tears I have shed.

Dear shepherd, I hear and will follow thy call;
I know the sweet sound of Thy voice.
Restore and defend me, for Thou art my all,
And in Thee I will ever rejoice.

   - Joseph Swain, London, 1791

FUTURE

"I see a wonderful future in a very uncertain world. If we will cling to our values, if we will build on our inheritance, if we will walk in obedience before the Lord, if we will simply live the gospel, we will be blessed in a magnificent and wonderful way. We will be looked upon as a peculiar people who have found the key to a peculiar happiness. And many people shall go and say, 'Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord....for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem' (Isaiah 2:3). Great has been our past, wonderful is our present, glorious can be our future."  (President Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, November 1997, p 69)