Justice: When you get what you deserve. Mercy: When you don't get what you deserve. Grace: When you get what you don't deserve.
Read it like 50 times and ponder it for 20 minutes. It'll make sense. And then all of a sudden God's love will take on a whole new meaning.
I finally fully grasp how God can be both just and merciful. And it is through His grace that I can truly feel His love, even especially when I don't deserve it.
The pre-ceremony red carpet coverage of the 2013 Academy Awards is on the t.v. as I write this. I watched the above video as Kristen Chenoweth interviewed Hollywood starlets about their designer gowns in the background. Interesting juxtaposition. Glamour vs grief. Stardom vs sorrow. Power vs pain.
Certainly Kristen Chenoweth knows nothing of self-doubt. Look at those perfectly sculpted arms.
Jennifer Lawrence has probably never been lonely. She's funny and witty and talented and charming.
Reese Witherspoon has no idea what helplessness and hopelessnes feel like. She's one of the wealthiest women in the world.
Maybe. Maybe not.
I'm leaning towards maybe not.
Marilyn Monroe is quoted as saying: “I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.”
May we be sensitive to the inner struggles of those around us. Let us remind them that they are never completely alone. And when it is us that is suffering, may we remind ourselves that there is One who suffered before us, who knows our heartache better than anyone and is there to offer us hope.
"The Son of Man hath descended below [it] all. Art thou greater than He?" (D&C 122:7)
I was the technophobe who never wanted an iPod.
We all know how well that turned out.
And it's only been downhill from there.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Here I sit in an abyss of technology. Work laptop on my knees. Personal laptop open next to me, playing Steel Magnolias. Work iPhone 5 came in the mail today. I stare at it in disgust. Personal Smart Phone lays ajacent to it. I feel sick.
I was meant for a different decade century.
The only thing feeding my old school soul right now is Steel Magnolias.
"Men have come to speak of revelation as long ago given and done, as if God were dead....It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was, that He speaketh, not spake....The need was never greater of new revelation than now."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
(from an address delivered in the Divinity College at Cambridge University, 15 July 1838)
