Making it Up As I Go

Some thoughts:

This jumped out at me: “…because of their lack of faith He was unable to accomplish any great work except to heal a few exceptional believers on who He laid His hands.” How often do we limit what Christ can accomplish by our unbelief?

I love that the disciples are instructed to be “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves”, it reminds me of Ammon who is described as “wise, yet harmless” when King Lamoni offers him up to half of his kingdom. Here were men with incredible power given them by God, and they’re reminded to be like Christ and not use it in the wrong ways.

I keep being struck that it must have been really tiring to be Christ. He really rarely had any time to Himself, and when He tried to go off, people just followed Him. He must have been very tired. It’s instructive to me that in the times that He did have to Himself, He prayed.

I love the walking on water story, love, love love it.So many incredibly useful parallels.

Oooh, I really like this: “It is not sufficing to accept the precepts of Christ as we may adopt the doctrines of scientist, philosophers, and savants, however great the wisdom of those sages may be; for such acceptance is by mental assent or deliberate exercise of will, and has relation to the doctrine only as independent of the author.”

I find it interesting that it was the truth about Christ’s identity and His role in the salvation of man that caused so many to turn away from Him- not some other doctrine. We throw around the whole “wheat and chaff” analogy a lot in a really judge-y way when something happens that makes people question the prophet or some church policy, but I think this is where it truly applies. If you’re choosing to turn away from Christ, you’re in a worrisome spot. I don’t know that I’m expressing myself right, hopefully you get what I’m saying.