Just Watch

I found a few great talks from general conferences that I felt inspired to share. Pick one or all of them! They are all great.

Elder Bednar – We Believe in Being Chaste

President Nelson – Lessons From Eve

President Nelson – Celestial Marriage

Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson – Defenders of the Family Proclamation

Just Do

There are a lot of great suggestions for family activities in Come, Follow Me this week. I will point you to those resources as they are really great! Come, Follow Me Activities

Just Learn

The manual has a brief explanation of the cultural connotation for 1 Corinthians 11:4–15. But I would like to provide you with an alternative way to interpret a few of these scriptures. Remember that verses 4-6 and 13-15, as the Come, Follow Me manual says, are in reference to some very specific cultural beliefs of Paul’s day that aren’t necessarily important to get into.

Read the following scriptures: Doctrine and Covenants 65:3, Mark 2:19-20, Revelation 19:7-9, and Revelation 21:2. If Christ is the groom then who is his bride?

To answer that, read Ephesians 5:23-25.

Remember Paul starts this discussion with “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” He’s not only talking about some cultural customs of his time in all these verses. He is at the same time trying to teach about the Church’s relationship to Christ, an idea Paul echoes in Ephesians. And one that Christ teaches throughout his life.

Now read again 1 Corinthians 11:7-12, except this time let’s make the connection of what we learn about Christ as the bridegroom and who the bride is as stated in Ephesians(the Church is the bride of Christ). This is a pattern that is consistent in the scriptures even in the Old Testament (Hosea 1:2 is an example, where Hosea is commanded to marry an unfaithful woman, which is a representation of Christ taking an unfaithful bride in the Church.) We can use patterns like these to help understand scriptures, such as Corinthians 11, that seem to not have much cultural relevance in our time. But what’s amazing about scripture is the language often allows us to liken them to ourselves using parallels either from our own time or from other places in the scriptures that speak of the same subjects but with different language.

How does applying this representation of Christ bring new meaning to these scriptures for you? What other hard to understand or seemingly culturally specific scriptures can you apply a similar way of studying to?

Weekly Challenge

This week’s scriptures included Paul’s discourse on Charity. Think of one way you can be more charitable and express the love of Christ. Then plan either an activity or an action that will show that charity.