WHY NOT A HUNDRED BUCKS AN HOUR?

Hey, Liberals.  Your position is that raising the minimum wage to $15.00 will not mandate an increase in prices or lead to layoffs, right?  Of course I'm right.  Even if Bush did lie about WMD's.  Go with me for a minute.  You say employers can raise their employee's wages by more than 100% in some places, and they will NOT have to raise prices or lay off workers. 

Well, aren't you a bunch of miserable, skinflint pikers!  If we can just magically raise the wage to $15/hour without it affecting the bottom line, why not raise it to $100/hour?  Hell, if the money isn't coming from anywhere, anyway, why should we limit the wage to a niggardly 15 bucks an hour?  Seriously!  What’s so significant about $15/hour?  Is that what YOU decided other people need to live?  Who died and left you omniscient?  If we say $6/hour is adequate, what makes us automatically wrong and you right?  Are we bastards because our number is lower than yours?    Who says 15 has more moral authority than 6?

Well, how about this:  We say raise the minimum wage to $100/hour!  There!  Now YOU’RE the bastards! I’m serious.  If the money isn’t coming out of income, why not reach for the stars?  Hell’s fire, why not a grand an hour? 

Oh, wait!  I hear you saying that the evil rich employers have lots and lots of money, and they need to share.  May I propose that even vile, evil employers are human beings, and by your stated ideal that all human beings should receive at least $15.00 an hour, that must also include employers.  Frankly, I know a lot of business owners who would be delighted to make that much.  Given that most of them work 70-90 hours a week, they'd be knockin’ down some jing!  (Translation: they’d be makin' some bank!)

Now I hear some of you saying that $100/hour is too much, and such a wage really WILL bankrupt businesses.

Bully for you!  There is at least a smidgen of intellect there.  So if $100/hour will break a business, then there must be truth to the principle that you can’t get more out of something than you put in.  We are in agreement on that principle!  We’re still off a bit on the numbers, but we agree on the principle.  So somewhere on the scale between $15.00 and $100.00, there is a point at which the exhaust exceeds the intake.  Come on, now.  I know you aren’t ALL professors.  If 15 is okay, but 100 isn’t, how about 99?  Or 89?  Or 49?  Where is the point of fulcrum where the teeter-totter tips from solvency to bankruptcy?

I submit that it is different for every business.  Some might be able to sustain the higher number, but I assure you, some will perish at the lower number.  Some were sucking wind at 6!  You think the government is all-knowing, and can, by some magic, arrive at a number that will be universally survivable.  Now, I don’t know how many businesses there are in America, but there has to be in the hundreds of thousands.  That’s a lot to keep track of.

And you are saying this can be done by an institution and a mob that went broke selling liquor in a whore house - people who are of such staggering intellectual incapacity that avocados look down on them - by the Pelosis, who say America doesn’t have a spending problem - by the Reids, who say you can protect your house by firing blindly into the night and maybe killing  a kid on the next block – by the Obamas who think the Navy medical personnel who serve the Marine Corps are called, “corpsemen.”  These people should not be trusted with burnt out matches.

The idea that an anointed class of educated Special Ones can manage all of society’s issues by application of their superior intellect is at the heart and soul of all fascist doctrine.

Think about this.  Let’s look at a single McDonald’s outlet.  That business receives money (called “income”) from its customers.  It exchanges products for that money.  In order to have products to exchange, the outlet must first bring those products inside its walls.  A short list of those products would be overwhelming:  meat, grease, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sesame buns, onion buns, plain buns, salt, pepper, garlic, ranch dressing, thousand island dressing, ketchup, mustard, relish, honey mustard, knives, forks, spoons, those crazy implements they give you with McFlurrys, ice cream mix, vanilla flavoring, chocolate flavoring, hand soap, dish soap, disinfectant, register tape, registers, pens, paper, teeny cups, bigger cups, still bigger cups, humongous cups (void where prohibited by idiocy)… Every single item must come to this store from some source, and those sources are other businesses that have employees, and some of them have extremely complex machinery.  And let’s not forget the truckers and railroad men who schlep all this stuff around the world.

In every one of those businesses, there is an endless list of supplies and equipment.  Oh, and we haven’t even started talking about utilities and insurance and government extortion… I mean, license fees.  And TAXES! Let’s say, just to deal in even numbers – and number that are manageable – that the McDonald’s where we started uses 5,000 different commodities.

Every one of those comes from another business, so that’s 5,000 businesses.  But even those businesses can’t ship something they don’t have, so they must also have STUFF.  Let’s say each of those businesses uses 5,000 commodities.

5,000 times 5,000 is not 25 thousand.  It is 25 million.  And each of those businesses will use 5,000 commodities. 5 thousand times 25 million is 125 billion.  Oh, and did I mention that a lot of stuff like the machinery, the plastic forks and cups, aren’t even made in this country?

And this is just a single McDonald’s.  The same is true of everything in our lives – our clothes, food, cars, tools, medicine… EVERYTHING!  That’s billions of billons of transactions.

It goes on and on, but hopefully, you will get the point.  It’s an incomprehensibly complex chain of cause and effect, of supply and demand, and every bloody one of those commodities and businesses has employees and a ledger of income and expenses, and a lot of them aren’t even subject to our laws, in the first place.  And you people think your anointed ones can manage that equation?  Yeah, I guess you do.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a near majority of our neighbors who believe this friggin’ insanity. Only teachers and professors can wreak this kind of destruction on the human mind.  I’m serious!  What in the name of all that is holy could possibly make a normal, functioning human mind invent, accept, and then profess such patent excrement?

It is insanity.  It has been tried before, and as a historian, I can give you a guided tour of the rivers of blood and the mountains of festering corpses that have resulted from it.  We are no different, or better, or smarter than all of those tortured wretches who tried it before us. We are doing the same things that have been done before, and expecting different results.

STRYCHNINE AS A BEDTIME SNACK

Refer to this link for background on this essay:  http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/nm-court-says-christian-photographers-must-compromise-beliefs.html

The very concept of compromise as a moral imperative is anti-life, anti-liberty, and anti-everything else decent.  Compromise, in this case, is not a matter of letting the other person have the better parking space, or letting your spouse choose where you go for dinner.  In this case, compromise means, EXPLICITLY, that you are REQUIRED BY LAW to do something you believe to be morally wrong.

This is hideously wrong on so many levels, and in so many ways.

Before I go another inch, I want to make it absolutely clear to anyone possessed of sufficient mental acuity to get their shoes on the right feet three times out of five, that this is NOT about gay marriage!   This abhorrent policy will affect all people, no matter their sexual preference or race.  No one can predict who will be the next victim of this monstrosity; it may very well be one of the homosexual women who brought suit.  I, for one, hope it is.

The photographer did not do anything to prevent this couple from getting married.  In fact, the photographers offered to do portraits and other types of work for the couple.  They just didn’t want to be involved in a same-sex marriage.  There was a time in this nation when one could say, “Thanks, but that’s not my thing.  You go ahead though, and knock yourself out.”  No longer. Now, apparently, you are required to participate in anything anyone else can dream up.  Suppose the Justice Department of the United States is successful in having pedophilia declared a sexual preference?  Yup.  We have “same sex attraction,”  and now we’re going to have “youth attraction.”  That means the guy who molested your daughter can use the power of the law – which is the power of the gun – and force you to photograph his liaison with a child.  You think not?

Read Justice Bosson’s words again.  You have right to believe whatever you want, but you do NOT have a right to act on your belief.  Do you believe that pedophilia is a crime?  That’s fine; just keep it to yourself, you rightwing, Christian wacko.  If pedophilia is a legitimate sexual preference, then all laws against it are instantly voided. The North American Man-Boy Love Association will be doing handsprings. If the government can force you to participate in something you consider morally wrong, why can they not force you to participate in anything else they choose?

Now the left and all my atheist friends (I still have a few, I think, but most of them, broad-minded as ever, dumped me like a turd when I joined the LDS church) will be on me like a duck on a June bug about exaggerating and pandering to paranoia.  They’ll accuse me of screeching hyperbole and setting up straw men – just as they said when we warned that allowing same-sex marriage would have far-reaching and unobvious ramifications.

There are things in life called “principles.”  A principle is a rule that is true in all cases, and is not amendable.  You can’t change it, and when it is broken, there is a price to pay.  The sad thing about principles is that it’s possible to push the payment off on someone else, but principles are immutable and eternal.  If you don’t like “eternity,” change that to, “they’ll last as long as anything else does.”

Governments can and very often do violate principles.  When the people go along with the violation, all bets are off.  Once you throw out the principle of individual freedom and accept in its place the principle that one group of people can invalidate the rights of another group, the only thing you have left to discuss is which group gets bent over.  And one other thing:  if  the other guys are getting bent over today, there’s nothing in the world keeping it from being you tomorrow.  The principle you have adopted is that someone gets bent over.  Shut up and roll the dice.

There’s a classic story about a man who asked a woman if she’d sleep with him for a million dollars.  She said she probably would, so he asked if she’d do it for two dollars.  She swelled up and snapped, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?”

He said, “We’ve already established that, Darlin’.  We’re just haggling the price.”

When laws are changed, we don’t give the power to our buddy who is in office right now.  We give the power to the OFFICE, itself.  A lot of our neighbors like the idea of Barack Obama having enormous power over a specific part of the population.  What they don’t realize is that Obama won’t be in office forever, and if the other side ever gets another candidate elected, the power will then go to whomever holds the office.  It may be Christians getting bent over today, but next year, it may be someone else, and if that happens, you suckers better grin and take it, because you have no cause for complaining.

Back to compromise.  When we are talking about moral principles, compromise is suicide.  It does not mean letting your spouse pick where you go for dinner, or settling for a tax rate that’s half-way between your proposal and your opponent’s.  A compromise on a moral principle is like saying you are against slavery, but your border-jumper neighbor is making a killing selling little girls.  Because, according to Judge Bosson, compromise is a moral imperative, he must say he will not sell little girls on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but you must say it’s okay on other days.  Or perhaps he will sell Latina girls, but will return all of his Caucasian inventory to Juarez.  That’s compromise.

My mom used to say that compromise is like mixing shit with ice cream.  It doesn’t help the shit, and it ruins your ice cream.  My Arkansas cousin said compromise is like taking a crap in the far end of the bathtub.  Both of these earthy, borderline crude country proverbs are 100% correct.  Ayn Rand said that compromise on a moral principle is like eating nutritious food except on Mondays, when you eat strychnine; in any compromise between food and poison, only death can win.  The Scriptures say that God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of tolerance.  See? The principle applies equally, whether you are atheist or religious.  That’s one way you can tell it’s true; it holds up equally in all contexts.

There is NO moral imperative to compromise on principles.  This country will be either all slave or all free.  It can’t be one way some days and the other way on other days.  We must stand firm, and say, “Oh, no you can’t.”  We must have the courage and rectitude to refuse to compromise.  We must be thick-skinned enough to let the Left yap and wet their pants about our “radical” refusal to compromise.  The other side damned sure isn’t going to compromise unless they think we’re winning.

(Have you ever noticed that when you’re right, and you know it, and you think you can win, you don’t ask for compromise?  Compromise is the sniveling cry of the losers. They know they can’t win based on the supposed merits of their arguments, so they demand compromise as a moral imperative – essentially as a form of political welfare.  They can’t do the job, so they demand that we just GIVE them something they haven’t earned.  Winners don’t ask for compromise.)

So what if we lose?  What if they say, “You are our slaves,” and we say, “Like hell,” and it goes to the polls and Santa Clause wins again.  Do we say, “Aww, shucks,” stack our arms, and meekly bow our heads to receive our chains?

Like hell.

 political system that allows the disenfranchisement of any of its members is an immoral system, and must be struck down, disassembled, “…, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  That’s not from the Constitution, by the way.  It’s from the Declaration of Independence, which helped in no small measure to fuel and motivate a violent rebellion against a despotic government.  It could happen again.

I say it again:  there can be no such thing as the right to enslave.  And don’t EVEN start some bullshit with me about the Constitution allowing slavery in the beginning.  It did, and it also included the means of amendment and abolition of slavery.  Lincoln didn’t exactly use that process, but our ancestors got it done.  Do you realize that history does not show a single instance of one race paying over 400,000 lives for the freedom of another race?  (It didn’t happen here, either, but if you want to pretend the War Between the States was over slavery, you must also believe this.)

PROFILING AS A MEANS OF SURVIVAL

I had just dropped a squeeze bottle of mustard in my shopping cart when an attractive young Latina came around the end of the shelf and into the aisle where I was.  She wasn’t really power shopping, just sort of strolling along, and she didn’t have a cart.  As she passed me, we smiled at each other, but neither spoke.  I’m way past the age when I’ve become invisible to young women, so when I get a smile, I pause for a moment to savor it, but, like a wild bird landing on one’s shoulder, those moments flee if we try to enlarge upon them.

A few seconds after she passed me, another young girl came into the aisle, and this one just knocked my socks off.  She clutched a box of breakfast cereal to her heart, holding it in both of her chubby hands.  The box covered her from her chin almost to her dimpled knees, and a shock of jet black hair balanced on top of her head like a block of hay someone had painted and balanced there.  She was about 18 months or so – walking pretty well, but still a toddler.  As she turned into the aisle, she craned her neck to her right, looking for something behind me.  She was coming right on, but not holding her windage real well.  When she was about 6 feet from me, I stopped my cart to avoid the risk of bumping into her if she swerved at the wrong time.

As she approached me, I felt a smile warm my face like a sunbeam coming through a just-opened curtain; she was just feloniously adorable.  She looked up at me, and when she saw my smile, her little face lit up, that no-nonsense expression that women get when they are shopping for blood melted, and she smiled back at me.  Standing stock still as she passed, I turned to see if her mom were keeping track of her.  At the time the little one first came into view, her mom was probably 20-25 feet away from her, and I was between them.

Her mom, who had just smiled a friendly smile at me, had stopped and taken a short step toward the baby.  Her body language said, “alert!” in the way she leaned forward, her weight more on her toes, her knees bent ever so slightly.  She was still sort of smiling at me, but it was a very different smile – worried, not wanting to frighten her daughter, but warning me.  I smiled directly at Mom and said something insipid like, “Some folks might think she’s cute or something.”  Mom’s smile flickered and softened a tiny bit.  She took the baby’s hand and led her on down the aisle.  I turned away from them because I knew that if Mom turned back and saw me watching that baby toddling along with her cereal, all of the agonistic behaviors would return.  In my mind, though, I watched, and felt a smile on my heart, if not on my face.

A few minutes later, I turned into the canned food aisle, and there were the two of them. Baby still held her cereal while Mom was shopping for something, but Mom was staying much closer.  I was moving slowly, looking for a can of corn, but I glanced at them in time to see Mom look at me.  Her jaw set almost imperceptibly, and she turned, took Baby by the hand, and led her away from me.  Her body language said, “Condition orange,” and though she didn’t hurry, she didn’t stop to look at any canned goods.  She reminded me of a lioness who, being disturbed, decided she didn’t feel like a fight, but damned sure didn’t want to be disturbed any closer.

I looked down, no more smiles anywhere in or on me. That woman saw a fat, old White man watching her baby girl, and she automatically acted to avoid any possibility of danger.  I don’t blame her a bit.  In fact, I kind of wish she hadn’t let the baby get so far behind her in the first place.  She had no way of knowing that I have always loved children, and they have always loved me.  (Well, not always; there was a period in which I tried with all my heart and soul to win to the love of my step-daughters, but failed utterly with two of the three.)  At church, there are a half-dozen little ones, mostly girls, who view me as either a grandfather or a soft, interactive jungle gym, but that young mother had no way of knowing how my heart swells, and sometimes my eyes puddle up when my little girlfriends tackle me.  She had no way of knowing that I’d see my hands cut off before I’d hurt her baby, or that my life and my pistol are pledged to the defense of such as they.

This is one of the things I really, really hate about the age in which we now live.  That woman “profiled” me.  She saw a person who fits the stereotype of a molester, and she didn’t stop to interview me or show me a stack of Rorschach cards.  It hurts something awful to endure such a thing, but I would never, for an instant deny that woman her right or her obligation to do it.  There really are some fat, old White guys who would harm that baby, and it would be insane to claim otherwise.  Given the number of people we meet in a day, even as she and I met in the store, it is absolutely impossible to evaluate each of them on anything other than immediately verifiable, physical characteristics.  Given time, she and I could probably be friends, and she might even trust me to hold and play with her baby, if only under close supervision.  But in the store, she didn’t have time, and the consequences of a wrong guess were unthinkable.  She did what any intelligent, aware parent would do; she put distance between her baby and the possibility of a threat.

This is just one more cost of the permissive, “non-judgmental” legal environment that has turned our streets into sewers.  More than 80% of all crime is committed by people who have already been convicted at least once.  Child molestation, in particular, has an almost 100% recidivism rate – meaning child molesters are, for all practical purposes, never cured.  They are predators for life.  If our courts would remove such people from our midst, we would be dealing only with new ones.  As it is, however, the population of criminals of all types is growing almost exponentially, and the odds of any one of us being a victim is increasing proportionally.  How ironic is it that, in the supposed interest of being “non-judgmental,” and not assuming the worst of anyone, and not “profiling” anyone, the average citizen has been placed in the position of judging, assuming, and profiling many times a day.

Profiling is nothing more than playing the odds in a game of back alley roulette, and the number of loaded chambers is being increased by the very people who are supposed to protect us.  And I’m here to tell you that it is an awful feeling to know that I fit the profile of something I hold so loathsome, but that’s the way it is.  I know I’m a good man, and I forgive others who, like this mom, aren’t so sure.

28 July, 2013

Rebsarge

THE BEST DAY OF THE WEEK

Good afternoon, Brothers and Sisters.  Our topic today is the Sabbath.  When I was assigned this topic, I thought, “Oh, this should be a tightly-focused, narrow topic.”  My record is still perfect; ain’t been right yet.

As always, as I prepared for this talk I have been enlightened, and my mind opened to the truth vastly more than my poor words might ever convey to you, my dear friends.  I have felt no small amount of shame and remorse as my backsliding and foolishness has been made manifest to me.

In addition to the Scriptures, the main sources for this talk are from the January, 1978 edition of “The Ensign,” which was devoted to the Sabbath.  The managing editor, Jay M. Todd, wrote a short foreword to that issue:

“Early in 1976 the subject of the Sabbath was discussed with our Brethren. They agreed that a treatment of that topic could have a powerful impact on the lives of members of the Church. Thus the articles in this issue were prepared; and they are featured together here to provide a complementary unit of themes relating to Sunday. We hope that readers will find helpful the ideas and experiences voiced by members of the Church—not as official pronouncements concerning Church Sabbath-day practices, but as good counsel to be considered by all who have seen the need for renewed efforts in making Sunday the best day of the week.”

I recommend this issue of the “Ensign” with all my heart.  As Brother Todd said, it may not be official doctrine, but it is filled with dynamic power and timeless relevance.  It is available on the church web site, lds.org.

From the Book of Exodus, chapter 20, verses 8 through 11, we know that to Moses was given the commandment,

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
  
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy
cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and
 rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

In Doctrine &Covenants 59, we are told:

"But remember that on this, the Lord’s day, thou shalt offer thine oblations and thy sacraments unto the Most High, confessing thy sins unto thy brethren, and before the Lord.

And on this day thou shalt do none other thing, only let thy food be prepared with singleness of heart that thy fasting may be perfect, or, in other words, that thy joy may be full.

Verily, this is fasting and prayer, or in other words, rejoicing and prayer.

And inasmuch as ye do these things with thanksgiving, with cheerful hearts and countenances, not with much laughter, for this is sin, but with a glad heart and a cheerful countenance—

Verily I say, that inasmuch as ye do this, the fulness of the earth is yours, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and that which climbeth upon the trees and walketh upon the earth;

Yea, and the herb, and the good things which come of the earth, whether for food or for raiment, or for houses, or for barns, or for orchards, or for gardens, or for vineyards;

Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart;

Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul.”

Surely, then, the Sabbath is made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.  Think of each of the promises made in this passage as I read them again.

“The fulness of the earth is yours, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and that which climbeth upon the trees and walketh upon the earth;

Yea, and the herb, and the good things which come of the earth, whether for food or for raiment, or for houses, or for barns, or for orchards, or for gardens, or for vineyards;

Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the
use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart;

Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the

soul.”

We are given all the animals to use as food when necessary, but also so that their beauty, power, and majesty might please our eyes and gladden our hearts.  We are given all good things which come from the earth – that which grows in the soil, but also the minerals and elements from the earth, itself – but it says, “…in the season thereof…” meaning as appropriate to our stewardship, not as looters.  And all of these things do, indeed nourish us physically, aesthetically, and spiritually.  And all we have to do is keep the Sabbath holy, in accordance to His commandments.

This is not the first time I have read these scriptures.  How is it, then, that I have been so easily lured into so many foolish ideas about the Sabbath?

For example, I have convinced myself that I can get as much by staying home and reading the Scriptures and reflecting prayerfully on them as I can get from going to church.  My dad used to tell me that when I was alone, I was in bad company.  The meaning of  Matthew, 18:20 was totally lost on me.  “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”  Here, in our midst, is He.  But more than once I have thought that I could get as much on my couch as here, with you wonderful people whom I love, and Him.

Here’s another good one.  I actually convinced myself many times that because of my family’s financial straits, the opportunity to earn a premium wage by working on the Sabbath was a blessing, and that by working, I was honoring the gifts of strength, a job, and overtime.   What makes this even more stupid is that when I was a teacher for the priest’s quorum in the young men’s organization, I delivered a talk on the Sabbath.  In preparation for that talk, I took a handful of quarters out to my drill press and punched a 3/8 hole through each quarter.  I gave each young man one of those quarters, saying that it was to remind them that, no matter how much they might make by working on the Sabbath, something would be missing from their lives.  Even after that, I let myself get suckered by the Adversary. 

President Kimball, in the opening essay of that issue of the “Ensign,” said,

“When men and women are willing to work on the Sabbath to increase their wealth, they are breaking the commandments; for money taken in on the Sabbath, if the work is unnecessary, is unclean money. Can you imagine a person laboring on the Sabbath in defiance of the Lord’s command, and then bringing a tithe or other portion of the ill-gained fruits of this labor to Him as an offering? Just as in Old Testament times, offerings presented to the Lord must be “without blemish,” and unnecessary Sabbath-day earnings can never be such.”

Do you see my foolishness?  Yes, we were in trouble, and I never thought of myself as working to increase my wealth.  I was working to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads.  It was a grim and stressful time, which is precisely why I should have been even more attentive to the commandments, particularly that of keeping the Sabbath.  When we most needed the blessings that come with keeping the Sabbath, I was at work, trying to do it the hard way.

One of the most cleverly-disguised abuses of the Sabbath was when I decided that, because my family and I were so busy during the week, that skipping church occasionally for a day trip was a righteous activity.  Oh, to be sure, I would occasionally make a Scriptural point as we drove along, or would praise the beauty of creation.  The kids would roll their eyes and go back to reading Harry Potter or texting or whatever they were doing.  As you can see, not only did I handicap myself by shunning the blessings promised for keeping the commandments, but I dragged my innocent little children along with me!

One of the essays in “The Ensign” was written by President Eyring, when he was deputy commissioner of Church Education.  It is in response to the question, “Should I do schoolwork on the Sabbath?”

“Suppose you were invited to the office of the president of a nation to meet him about an important government appointment. Would you concentrate easily as you read your algebra book in the minutes before you walked from your hotel to the nation’s headquarters? How comfortably would you slip into writing an essay on philosophy in the hours afterward? If you read before or after, it would almost certainly be either the president’s prior statements or information on topics relating to the office you were being considered for. If you wrote afterwards, it would be about your impressions, your insights, your recollections of your conversation.

“If a visit with a president would blot out interest in unrelated studies, what could be the effect of a visit with the Creator? The Sabbath is an invitation from the Master to commune with him, and we are striving, not for an office, but for eternal life. He arranges lessons to be taught from his own scriptural texts; he instructs his priesthood to serve you the sacrament; and then he promises his presence:

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

And here we are, back to Him, as it has been and will be from everlasting unto everlasting.

So how can we establish the Sabbath in our own lives as the best day of the week?  One of the most interesting articles I found is in “The Latter-day Saint Woman: Basic Manual for Women.”  Lesson 4 speaks of making the entire week a period of preparation for the Sabbath, and making the Sabbath the focal point, or climax of the week.

How many times have we entered the Sabbath stressed to the limit with the mundanities of life?  Even though they be very important and worthy things, such as keeping our homes clean, our children dressed in clean clothes, schoolwork done, meals prepared, gas tanks filled, and the million and ten details that seem to eat us alive?  Am I the only one who has ever thought at bedtime on Saturday, “Oh, my gosh!  Tomorrow is Sunday!”  It comes around just about every week, right after Saturday, and usually, right before Monday.  But so often it sneaks up on me.  

This lesson offers several common-sense suggestions for planning ahead.  Common sense means things I wouldn’t have thought of on my own in a hundred years.  The week can be scheduled with Sunday specifically in mind if we but give that commandment the priority it merits.   I’m sure some of y’all have read Stephen Covey’s masterpiece, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”  One of those habits is that of putting first things first.  I had an opportunity to see Covey speak on this topic in person.  He illustrated it by taking two large pickle jars and a selection of rocks and objects of various sizes, including some sand.  He explained that the biggest rocks were the most important commitments in our schedule.

He started by pouring the sand into one jar, then put in a few of the largest rocks.  The jar was full, but there were still a lot of rocks left on the table.  Then he took the other jar and placed in it the largest of the rocks.  The rocks came to the top of the jar, giving the impression that it was full.  Next, he put in the next size smaller rocks, which filled the gaps between the big rocks.  Again the jar was full, but it had lot more rocks in it.  He repeated the process, going smaller and smaller, and when he at last added the sand, the jar was really full, but everything was in it.  Hence the importance of putting first things first.

Now I am not about to stand up here and tell anyone what is most important.  We each have our own jars and our own rocks.  But this much seems clear to me:  remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy is a commandment, and that makes is a pretty big rock.  Speaking for myself, it is my intention to put the Sabbath – the biggest of my rocks – in my weekly jar first, so that I will never again be tempted to pass on it because there’s just too much sand.

How many of the stressful circumstances that urge us to neglect the Sabbath might be solved or even removed from our lives if we obey this commandment?

That one issue of the “Ensign” has many articles on the Sabbath, and I have only superficially touched on two of them.  It’s like a General Conference issue, but devoted solely to the Sabbath.

I would like to close by reading part of an essay from the Nov., 1984 “Ensign,”  by Elder John H. Groberg, then of the 70.  He told of driving to a speaking assignment on a Sunday.  His drive took him through the Cache Valley of Utah.  He wrote at length about the indescribable peace and serenity.  No one worked in the fields, the stores were closed, the usually busy roads were almost deserted.  The beauty of the place was even greater than usual, and it struck him that it was because so many of the people were observing the Sabbath.  They were in church, gathering in the presence of the Lord.  His description of the valley is really beautiful.  The article is worth reading, if only for that.

Months later, after an especially hectic period of immersion in the world out there, he said,

“I thought about Sodom and Gomorrah. Could they have been much more wicked than this? And yet the Lord promised to spare them for fifty righteous souls—or even down to ten—but they were not found.

“I let my imagination go and seemed to see a band of destroying angels loosed from heaven—thundering across the land. And even before I had time to think about the situation, I seemed to see myself standing in front of these determined destroyers, declaring, “Hold, hold, hold”; and they held. “Go back,” I said: and their horses reared, their eyes flashing in impatience. The destroyers’ anxiousness showed, but they held.

“The leader looked me squarely in the eye and challenged, “By what right do you ask us to hold? Have you not seen the evil of the land?”

“I replied, “Yes, I know of the sordidness of the world. I see the constant mocking of God’s laws, the merchandising on his holy day, the constant breaking of his commandments. I see the evil that exists almost universally. Yes, yes, all these things are true, still …” Then I became concerned. What right had I to ask them to hold?

“My eyes began to fall from his penetrating gaze, but something inside kept searching, searching, until finally a laserlike beam locked on to a misty memory made many months ago and faithfully filed away for such a time as this. A vista of a beautiful green valley passed before me and moved to the front of my consciousness.

“I raised my eyes and met his as he again said, “What right do you have to ask us to hold?”

“Then with the confidence of sure knowledge and spiritual direction, I replied, “You must hold, for you see, I have been through the Cache Valley on a Sunday afternoon.”

“There was no hesitation, no anger, no look of surprise, no disappointment, only obedience; and he turned and rejoined his group, and they left.”

Brothers and Sisters, can we possibly leave to our children any worldly gift that could be greater than to enable one of them – or even one of us, for that matter – to stand before the destroyers and say, “You must hold, for I have been through the Paradise Hills Ward on a Sunday afternoon?”

I thank you for your kind tolerance.  I am most humbly indebted to the Bishopric for this assignment.   I leave with you my testimony of the truth of the Gospel,  most humbly, in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.