Why Wealth?

Most people dream of wealth... Success... Fame.
So I had a question.
Why?
Why would a person want to be wealthy, isn't that just more money to deal with and more stress?
Then I thought about it for a while. People want wealth because they want experience. The world is so much easier to experience as a wealthy person. A wealthy person can give more, can travel more, can experience more, and make a greater impact on the world...
One day I'm going to be a wealthy person, and with that wealth I'm going to change the world.
I'm going to do so much good for so many people.
Come, join me. We'll go together, and we'll experience the world. We'll uplift everybody we see.
We'll do God's work, and spread His light to the nations.
We will change the world.

Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Servant

"Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
When I leave this life, I shall go to my Father in Heaven. I shall kneel at his feet, and plead not for mercy, but worship Him for the mercy He has already given me. I shall thank Him for His kindness. I shall honor Him for His guidance which was given to me in this life.
I shall kneel at the feet of Christ with clean hands and a heart full of love. I shall thank Him for the inspiration His life was to me. I shall honor Him for His great plan of happiness. I shall thank Him for His atonement, which He performed for all the worlds.
I shall greet the Holy Spirit, and thank him for comforting me when I was sad, guiding me when I was lost, and helping me to serve when I had abundance.
Then I shall stand before the judgment bar of God, with clean hands and a pure heart, and with peace shall speak my case to my Father as to why I belong with Him. We'll review my life. And at the end, I only want one thing.
I want my Father to wrap me up in a hug, and quietly speak these words.
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
I want to leave this life knowing that I have done all I can do to glorify God, and I'm going to do it too. I will not be idle. God made me to do great things, and I'm going to do them. The Devil cannot stop me, and nobody stronger than he is trying to stop me, so I'm in good shape. I've still got a long life to live. I have a lot of people to help. A lot of opportunities to love and serve.
I am going to change the world.

One day... I really am going to leave this life.
When I leave, feel nothing but joy in my passing, for I am going to be with God.
And one day... He really will wrap me up in His arms.
And He really will speak such words to me.
"Well done, my son. Sit for a moment. Rest. What a marvelous effort you gave in that life.
Welcome home."

A Repost of a Post Which Never Should Have Been Deleted

Hey Kim, I think you're really beautiful.
Just so you know. :)

Loneliness

So this is loneliness.
Oh..
Okay.
Hello loneliness. Come, stay a while.
I need to feel something, at least.

Thank You, Chayce

It is incredible the little things that influenced me greatly in childhood.
Like the time that I used a hyphen on an assignment in elementary to make a wo-
rd extend to the next line. The teacher said it was the wrong thing to do. I simply responded, "That's how they do it in the Bible!"
That was in like... Second grade. Haha. :D
Little bits of my memory which stick out. The one I just mentioned is the one which has driven me over the years to improve my grammatical and punctuation skills.
There is one though which I think has influenced me more than almost any other.
A memory, which I can still hear and see from the hundreds of times I heard and saw it.
A girl, whose name was, and if she hasn't changed in the while since I've seen her, Chayce.
I never had a crush on Chayce or anything. But I watched her all the time. She was just. So. Happy. I never understood it.
One day, heading into band class for the hundredth time, I heard the familiar, "Hey Dallin!!! :D" And saw Chayce's bright, beautiful face as she greeted me the same way she had for years. The same way she greeted everybody, as far as I could tell. The way she greeted me even when I didn't think I had friends.
I decided that day that I was going to learn to be as happy as Chayce. It took effort. I had to consciously smile all the time. Be enthusiastic in my greetings to people. Smile more. Be optimistic. Smile more. Laugh more. Smile more. Care for people. Smile more.
It still takes effort.
That little memory has changed me. I'm not the boy I used to be. I am much happier. And, I make it a goal to brighten the lives of everybody I see every day, because I remember.
I remember what it's like to feel like I have nobody to go to and to have someone walk up to me and enthusiastically exclaim, "Hello Dallin! :D"
I remember what that did to my day.
And my week.
My month.
My year.
My life.
And so, the long owed thanks now comes.
Thank you, Chayce. You changed my life.
May God bless you forever, and may joy remain always in your heart.
Keep smiling. :)
Love,
Dallin

Why the Military is so Good for so Many People

Why is the military so good for so many people?
That's a question I thought about today. It's an important question for me, because I've thought seriously many times that maybe the military would be a good place for me to go.
I stumbled upon an article today. It is called 39 Gut Wrenching Photos of the Reality of War, Puts Everything Into Perspective.
Go take a minute and look at it. It puts things in perspective.

Now close your eyes and give a moment of silence for those who have given their lives for your freedom.

Back to the original question.
Why is the military so good for so many people?
Because it grounds them in what is real.
So what is real then?
This is real.

And so is this.

...And so is this.


Though it's not pleasant, it is real.
This is life and death at it's extremes. This is love and hate, joy and sorrow, happiness and pain.
War is the culmination of the extremes of human feeling.
That being said, do you know what else is real?

This is real.

And so is this.

And so is this.


Christ lives.
I testify to you with all of my being that he lives.
I love him. He is my savior. He has saved me from sin and death. I shall live forever.
So shall you, if you choose to accept him.
This is why the military is so good for so many people. It grounds them in what is real. It makes life so hard that they have to seek truth, because they can find solace in nothing else. They have to find what is real and hold so fast that their entire being becomes dependent on it if they are to live afterwords. Otherwise they perish.
So what is real?
Christ is real.
I believe in Christ.
Do you?

Bound for the Promised Land

I love this song with my entire heart. It fills my soul with fire.
This is my mission. This is my life. This is where I am going.

I am bound for the promised land.

Please, come with me.

13 Years Ago

13 years ago today, I sat in my living room and watched...

I watched as the world trade center was destroyed. 

I watched as people died.

I watched as the heart of America was broken.

I found this video today. Watch it, and then continue reading.

I really have very little to say. I feel like saying much at all would almost be irreverent.
God bless those people.
The only thing I must say is this.
We must not hate the people responsible for this. We must not be angered. We must not become defiled. Love is the only way to overcome this. We got Bin Laden, fantastic. I applaud all those behind counter-terrorism acts. But hate must not enter into our hearts.
If we hate, we lose. We lose the spirit of the Lord. We lose our unity. Eventually, we lose our freedom. It happens every time.
We cannot afford to hate.
Tonight, as you kneel beside your bed to pray, pray for the terrorists. Ask God to put truth in their souls and love in their hearts. Remember to pray for their victims too, but pray for the terrorists.
They need our prayers just as much as the victims.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
-Jesus Christ, Our Lord

Love

There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer;
No disease that enough love will not heal;
No door that enough love will not open;
No gulf that enough love will not bridge;
No wall that enough love will not throw down;
No sin that enough love will not redeem. . .
It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake--a sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. . . if only you could love enough, you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.

-Emmet Fox

I Believe In the Big Bang Theory

I believe in the big bang theory.
I do. I really, really do.
According to The California Institute of Technology, the big bang theory is defined as follows:
"The universe began by expanding from an infinitesimal volume with extremely high density and temperature. The universe was initially significantly smaller than even a pore on your skin. With the big bang, the fabric of space itself began expanding like the surface of an inflating balloon – matter simply rode along the stretching space like dust on the balloon's surface. The big bang is not like an explosion of matter in otherwise empty space; rather, space itself began with the big bang and carried matter with it as it expanded."
I believe that.
I do have one question though. Where is the mechanism? What is the force which began it all? Surely the universe is not a random error which came out of nothingness. It is more than that.
Look at these pieces of universe.











You live among all of that.
Isn't it astounding?
How though? How did all of this come to be? How did matter begin?
I don't know.
But I bet God does.
See, God is the missing link. He's the answer to the great question of how it all began. One day, it will be proven by science. Why? Because all things denote there is a God. Science and religion are not separate entities. They work simultaneously, and prove each other to be true. That is to say, true science and true religion.
One may say that God doesn't need the big bang theory, He could just make it all appear.
That may be true, but it's not what scripture says.
Genesis chapter one clearly shows that God was very articulate and purposeful in his creation of the universe. Genesis 1:1 says that, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth." That's what the most accepted English translation says. However, there are more ways to translate this phrase.

Another translation provided by Reading the Old Testament: Introduction to the Bible (pg. 38) says it like this, “When in the beginning Elohim created heaven and earth—earth being untamed and shapeless . . . —Elohim said, ‘Let there be light.’”

This fits exactly with the big bang theory, which according to space.com starts like this:

"In the first second after the universe began, the surrounding temperature was about 10 billion degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 billion Celsius), according to NASA. The cosmos contained a vast array of fundamental particles such as neutrons, electrons and protons. These decayed or combined as the universe got cooler. This early soup would have been impossible to look at, because light could not carry inside of it. "The free electrons would have caused light (photons) to scatter the way sunlight scatters from the water droplets in clouds," NASA stated. Over time, however, the free electrons met up with nuclei and created neutral atoms. This allowed light to shine through about 380,000 years after the Big Bang."

Excepting the timelines, it fits just right. The universe was untamed and shapeless. Then there was light, and the universe continued to grow. The accounts support each other perfectly. There is no way that Moses when writing Genesis knew the big bang theory. His knowledge was the word of the great creator Himself. 

So when I am asked if I believe in the big bang theory, my answer is yes, yes I do; and I believe that God is the one who began and directed the process. 

What a marvelous process it has been.

Fire

I constantly feel uneasy. Restless. Unsettled. And I haven't been able to figure it out. But I think I have an idea.
I love big things. I love leading a great work or being a part of something great, or anything with a grand vision. Constantly I am enveloping myself in something that makes me feel that way. I pursue greatness almost like a drug. It's something inside of me. Always I am doing something to improve myself or help other people. If I'm not improving my mind with learning or my body with exercise, I'm probably serving somebody, and if I'm not serving somebody, I'm probably at work, and if I'm not at work, I'm probably talking to somebody trying to help them with something, and if I'm not doing that I'm looking for one of those things to do. I get so focused that I can't think of anything else. I want to help people. I want to change the world. It's not even a conscious focus. It's very subconscious. I don't like doing unproductive things as a result. I don't usually like small talk. I don't like television. I don't like video games. I hardly like school, (Although I am working really hard to learn to enjoy it.) Sometimes it drives me nuts. I want to just have a normal conversation sometimes. But I'm not very good at it. So I go away from a conversation where I've only talked small feeling angry because I didn't help them, or learn something myself.
A dear friend told me the other day that I should chill. Stop trying so hard.
She's probably right.
I just have such a great work to do, you know? And if everything I'm doing doesn't help somebody, than I'm wasting time, and I don't have time for that. But at the same time I don't want to burn out like a piece of paper, really bright, and really hot, but really fast. I don't want to extinguish myself, but I don't know how to slow down. I feel like I have a switch and I'm either really moving and getting things done or I'm not doing anything at all.
I will overcome this. I will learn when to be intense and when to be calm, and how to be both at once.
It's just hard to flow like the wind when you want to burn like fire.
You feel?