December, 2020 - A Well Examined Life

“…whether by mine own voice…”

In 1864, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had a serious problem in the Sandwich Islands, what today we call Hawaii. The head of the church’s mission there had abused his stewardship and needed to be replaced. Elders Lorenzo Snow and Ezra T. Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve were dispatched to set things in order. To assist them in this endeavor, they recruited a young man who had just returned from a three-year mission in England and who had previously served a mission in Hawaii, where he learned the language and became well acquainted with the islands and their inhabitants.

After a long voyage, the party’s ship lay anchored in a channel at their destination. The seas in this region were rough, and traversing them could be dangerous unless you had the right kind of boat, were familiar with the currents, and knew the location of a man-made breakwater. Our young missionary possessed this knowledge, which he shared with his companions, recommending that they enlist the help of the locals and their specially designed boats to get ashore. But Elders Snow and Benson would have none of this.

Mary and the Sword

Winston Churchill was a passionate student of history and wrote extensively on the subject, including celebrated multi-volume accounts of the two world wars. An important lesson he derived from his studies is captured in one of his most famous quotes: “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.”

This mindset is a prerequisite to divining the meaning of biblical prophecies, which are less about the future and more about the past and what we need to learn from it. And there is no better illustration of this principle than the second oracle of Simeon chronicled in Luke.

The Gift of—and to—the Magi

Christmas stimulates our senses like no other holiday. The dazzling holiday lights and decorations, the scent of pine from the tree and the aroma of roasted chestnuts emanating from the street vendor’s cart in the big city, that first sip of cinnamon-laced eggnog (we’ll pass on the fruitcake, thank you very much), the heft and feel of an unwrapped present, and the warm embrace of friends and family with whom we reunite. And my favorite of all: the laughter of children and the music of the season. Especially the music.

The sensory appeal of the holiday is not surprising since Christianity is very much a materialist religion, emphasizing the physical world and the human body as vehicles of the divine. In Medieval Europe this belief often found expression in an intense desire to be near the relics of the saints and martyrs, sacred objects that were frequently venerated in magnificent religious structures. The Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, for example, was built in the 1240s by Saint Louis to house the Crown of Thorns, believed to have been on Christ’s head during the crucifixion.^[1]

A Christmas Story

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
1 Timothy 4:12 (KJV)

Gene Weingarten, an award-winning author and writer for The Washington Post, was trying to come up with a topic for his next book. While bouncing ideas off his editor, he said: “What if we randomly pick a day from the recent past—last 50 years or so—and write about what happened in the United States during those 24 hours?”

His editor liked it, and so the two of them, on New Year’s Day, 2013, headed to Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington where they imposed on some fellow oyster lovers to help them select a date between 1969 and 1989. Through the drawing of three numbers—a day, a month and a year—from an old green fedora, a day was chosen: December 28, 1986.

The two of them were crestfallen.