I'm so happy that you stopped by to visit us today! Before we get started with today's reading I wanted to share our Family Home Evening with you all. I thought I would share some pictures that I took tonight. Our church encourages every family to set aside one night a week to spend together, usually it is on a Monday. (Click HERE to learn more about Family Home Evening.) Honestly it's a little crazy with the boys and 2 teenagers but we do it and we love it!
We start out with a song and then a prayer. Usually we sing some fun songs for the little kids.
Next we have Show & Tell where we basically watch Brayden dance and sing for 20 minutes. LOL! He is a born performer!
Then we have a lesson. We usually try to think of something during the week that we need to work on and teach the children. Tonight, Andrew (my 11 year old) had prepared a lesson. We like the kids to have a turn teaching.
Next, we have a Family Council where we go around the room starting with the oldest child down to the youngest and ask them if they have anything they want to talk about or ask about or just share with everyone. Usually they talk about upcoming events like school, vacations, or birthdays.
We then have family scripture and closing prayer. Lately we have been studying the scripture by topic. We will ask if anyone has a question about the gospel and then all use our scriptures to find versus that might help answer the question. We have family scripture and prayer every night before we go to bed. I have found that by reading the scriptures as a family we have been strengthened and blessed.
Okay, let's go ahead and get started with our reading today.
Jacob 4:7
"Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things."
I love how Jacob talks about how he has weaknesses, too, along with the rest of us. "God showeth us our weakness"…. I am grateful that the Lord does show me my weaknesses so that they can be made strong through Him and the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
I found the following on lds.org
WEAKNESS
See also Humble, Humility
The condition of being mortal and lacking ability, strength, or skill. Weakness is a state of being. All people are weak, and it is only by God’s grace that they receive power to do righteous acts (Jacob 4:6–7). This weakness is manifest in part in the individual weaknesses or frailties that each person has.
We all have different weaknesses to overcome. I want to share this video on weakness. I hope this might touch someone's heart today as they watch it.
Jacob 5 covers the Allegory of the Olive Tree.
I found this great quote on lds.org..
An allegory uses symbolic representations to convey moral or spiritual ideas. These symbols provide additional meaning to the story when studied. The value of the allegory lies in understanding what it represents. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presented the principal theme of Zenos’s allegory:
“This allegory as recounted by Jacob is from the outset intended to be about Christ. …
“Even as the Lord of the vineyard and his workers strive to bolster, prune, purify, and otherwise make productive their trees in what amounts to a one-chapter historical sketch of the scattering and gathering of Israel, the deeper meaning of the Atonement undergirds and overarches their labors. In spite of cuttings and graftings and nourishings that mix and mingle trees in virtually all parts of the vineyard, it is bringing them back to their source that is the principal theme of this allegory. Returning, repenting, reuniting—at-one-ment—this is the message throughout.
“… At least fifteen times the Lord of the vineyard expresses a desire to bring the vineyard and its harvest to his ‘own self,’ and he laments no less than eight times, ‘It grieveth me that I should lose this tree.’ One student of the allegory says it should take its place beside the parable of the prodigal son, inasmuch as both stories ‘make the Lord’s mercy so movingly memorable.’
“Clearly this at-one-ment is hard, demanding, and, at times, deeply painful work, as the work of redemption always is. There is digging and dunging. There is watering and nourishing and pruning. And there is always the endless approaches to grafting—all to one saving end, that the trees of the vineyard would ‘thrive exceedingly’ and become ‘one body; … the fruits [being] equal,’ with the Lord of the vineyard having ‘preserved unto himself the … fruit.’ From all the distant places of sin and alienation in which the children of the Father find themselves, it has always been the work of Christ (and his disciples) in every dispensation to gather them, heal them, and unite them with their Master”.
Olive trees on Thassos, Greece: photo by Peter Pakandl, 7 September 2006
I encourage all of you to pray and ponder as you read Jacob 5. There is a lot of deep, spiritual meaning in it and I know that we can find out for ourselves what it means for each of us.
I'd like to close today with More Holiness Give Me sung by a combined Brigham Young University Choir.
This is just like our life: we must keep building onto our foundation weeding out the bad. We grow as we build then we weed again and we keep doing this until the end. Thus is a good interpretation of enduring to the end.
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