The Wexford Carol

Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son
With Mary holy we should pray,
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn,
There was a blessed Messiah born
The night before that happy tide
The noble Virgin and her guide
Were long time seeking up and down
To find a lodging in the town
But mark right well what came to pass
From every door repelled, alas
As was foretold, their refuge all
Was but a humble ox's stall
Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep
To whom God's angel did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear
Arise and go, the angels said
To Bethlehem, be not afraid
For there you'll find, this happy morn
A princely babe, sweet Jesus, born
With thankful heart and joyful mind
The shepherds went the babe to find
And as God's angel had foretold
They did our Saviour Christ behold
Within a manger he was laid
And by his side a virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of Life
Who came on earth to end all strife
There were three wise men from afar
Directed by a glorious star
And on they wandered night and day
Until they came where Jesus lay
And when they came unto that place
Where our beloved Messiah lay
They humbly cast them at his feet
With gifts of gold and incense sweet


My testimony is best borne through song. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior, the Only Begotten Son of God. His birth was prophesied from the beginning, that all men might look to Him for redemption from death and sin. The miraculous birth of Jesus pales in comparison to the miracle of His Atonement. He is the Alpha and Omega and the author of our salvation.

Carl Bloch Exhibit

I had the chance to visit BYU's Carl Bloch Exhibit last week. It was stunning and wonderful to see the paintings I'm so familiar with. Here is one of my favorite of his images: 

I love Christmas, and I love the way light works in this picture. The darkness outside that permeates everything speaks to me and how the world would be without Christ. Most of all, I love the way the light radiates from the infant Christ. I love that while Mary is distinctly in the light, it is certainly Christ that is the source. I love the way the humble shepherds ignore all except for the face of the newborn Lord.

Sacrifice of Thanksgiving

This week in New Testament, we had the chance to self-guide our study instead of going to class one day. One thing our professor provided in our guide was the instruction to read Psalms 116 as a probable hymn that Jesus and his disciples sang at the Last Supper. The part I found most significant reads:

"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
O Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.
I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord."

I found this to be wonderful symbolism. I can imagine the Savior thinking of his upcoming suffering and death as he sang that his death would be precious in the sight of the Lord. Perhaps he recalled the lines about being the Lord's servant when he later declared in Gethsemane "not my will, but thine be done." The son of Mary, the woman who before Christ's birth affirmed her role as "the handmaiden of the Lord" truly offered the most immense and most important sacrifice - the sacrifice from which all thanksgiving may come - and never ceased to call upon the name of the Lord while he did it. What seemed an ordinary Psalm to me has become a testament of Christ's atonement. 

If You Keep Asking Questions...

Today, I had spiritual insight while watching the Magic School Bus. It came from Ms. Frizzle, directed at her student Carlos (who I just love for all his bad puns).



"If you keep asking questions, you'll keep getting answers."

This applies to our spiritual learning as well as Carlos learning about sound. The Lord is anxious to pour out wisdom and knowledge to us, but he will not burden people with knowledge or testimony they do not seek.

Essential to spiritual progression is asking questions, and learning about them. While it's difficult to take time to consider things beyond what we must do relatively soon, it's very valuable to reflect upon questions that don't necessarily need answers immediately. I believe that when we do, the answers will surprise us in their relevance to the way we live our lives. Answers to questions may spawn further questions.

Heavenly Father teaches us through many methods: there are the scriptures, the words of the prophets, inspired blessings, and our own experiences with the Spirit. I believe that He also teaches us through our more secular learning environments, through music, through stories - even the Magic School Bus. It is up to us to look for those teaching experiences and to ask questions. The Lord will teach us if we will only let Him.

Open Thou Mine Eyes

One of my favorite choral composers is John Rutter, and one of my favorite songs of his is Open Thou Mine Eyes. 

Open thou mine eyes and I shall see;
Incline my heart and I shall desire;
Order my steps and I shall walk
In the ways of thy commandments.

O Lord God, be thou to me a God
And beside thee let there be non else,
No other, naught else with thee.

Vouchsafe to me to worship thee and serve thee
According to thy commandments
In truth of spirit, in reverence of body,
In blessings of lips,
In private and in public.

I love the symbolism of sight that surrounds Christ and His miracles. While our physical eyes may see, our spiritual eyes can yet be blind. We see in the New Testament that Christ miraculously healed the blind of their physical blindness. Like Christ's other miracles, a physical healing happens, but the most miraculous is what follows: spiritual healing. Christ has healed the physically blind, but that miracle does not last forever. Spiritually healing us and opening our spiritual eyes is an everlasting miracle. The author of Amazing Grace understood this, I think.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Mankind Was My Business!

I spend a lot of time studying business and finances. My homework routinely involves billion-dollar decisions that will someday be real decisions for me to make. In my future career, I'll be pushed and have more demands on my time, efforts, and attention that I could possibly meet. It's easy for people in business to forget the world around them. It's easy to let someone else attend to the needs of the world, since we're busy conducting business that grows the economy and benefits the world. We may even begin to think that if everyone would make the wise financial decisions we make, people wouldn't even need help or charity.

Surely that line of thought is similar to how Charles Dickens' Ebeneezer Scrooge of A Christmas Carol might have begun his descent into a "tight-fisted hand at the grindstone... a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster." 

In an attempt to warn Scrooge of the error of his way, his old friend Jacob Marley's ghost appears to him, and what he tells Scrooge is something I hope to live by my entire life:

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

Mankind is my business. Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence are my business. Accounting is what I am paid to do. Accounting is but the means by which I will fund my true purpose in life: to help my fellow men. 

God Gives Us What We Need

This week, I've had a ton of help from heaven in getting everything done. I've been blessed with particularly restful sleep the past two days, equipping me for the draining days ahead. I'm confident that the reason I had such an easy time with understanding my reading assignments yesterday was because the Lord quickened my mind. Somehow, I managed to fit everything in that I had to do. The Lord blessed me with fantastic teachers who engaged me in class, wonderful friends at work, and a boyfriend who's so mindful of me that he came to pick me up from work even when I forgot to ask him to, and brought me delicious Tim Tams. I forgot to set an alarm this morning, but Heavenly Father provided me with a miracle and I woke up barely in time to have Ariel drive me to class. I thought my team meeting was earlier than it was, but it turns out it wasn't and I had time to finish preparing for the meeting.

What I've noticed about these little miracles is that Heavenly Father gave me what I needed, but only just. I would have loved to have been woken up in time for a shower and breakfast today, but it wasn't necessary. Heavenly Father does let me struggle and He does push me so that I learn and grow, but in the end he bails me out of trouble when I can't do any more. I would have loved a really straightforward and obvious answer to my questions about which accounting firm to intern with, but instead, Heavenly Father let me struggle with the decision and gave me an answer only in a contented feeling about my decision.

When I think about it, this model of divine help totally makes sense with God's role as our parent. Good parents don't do everything for their children - rather, they allow their kids to do all they can for themselves, and then provide the help they need for the rest. God helps us just enough because he loves us.