Sunday July 6th

This morning before I church I was working on some Personal Progress goals, and read some scriptures about Christ.  I came up with some cool thoughts that I thought I would like to share in testimony meeting.
It was a nice plan, but it didn't work out so well.  When one of the first people got up to bear his testimony, his little boy followed him to the pulpit and wanted to talk in the microphone.  He let his little boy say something (that none of us could understand), and the little boy managed to break the microphone while he was at it.  It still worked in that it still carried people's voices over the speakers, but if it wasn't held up, it would just flop over onto the pulpit.  The Bishop was getting up to hold the microphone in between testimonies, and I could feel The Captain's stress mounting beside me.  Finally he got up and walked out, and I knew he had gone to find tools.  Sure enough, he came
walking back in a few minutes later with a screwdriver and a handful of screws.  He walked right up to the pulpit and as soon as that person finished, he started to work on the microphone.  The next person just used the hand mic while The Captain was taking the mic off the pulpit and putting it back on again.  The man is a compulsive fixer.  But he did a good job.  The microphone was standing straight and tall once again when he was finished with it.
All of this made it a little awkward for me to get up to bear my testimony.  But I had decided I would just do it anyway, and tried to move Gretl off my lap.  She was having absolutely none of that. She started making such a fuss that I put her back on my lap and gave up on the idea of bearing my testimony.  I know, I could have tried harder, but it was all so crazy that it just seemed like too much trouble.
But I still had these cool thoughts in my head that I carried through Sunday School and on to Relief Society.  I was wishing I had made a bigger push to bear my testimony in Sacrament Meeting when the Relief Society President got up and started the lesson.  And whaddaya know!  The lesson went along perfectly with my thoughts on Christ from the morning.  It fit exactly!  So I soon found an opportunity to raise my hand and share my insights, and felt a lot better.  I'm so glad that the Lord gave me a second chance to share the thoughts he had sent my way this morning.

P.S. My cool thoughts were these:  How could a people crucify their God?  It seems so insane to me that people would have that much nerve.  But Christ made his sacrifice so that He could be our judge.  He has paid for that right, and it is His alone.  That means that I have no right whatsoever to judge anyone else.  Christ is the only one who can do that.  All He has asked me to do is to love everyone.  So even though I might think that people who would crucify their god must be a bunch of dirt bags, he asked His father to forgive them, and paid for their sins even as they were killing him.  I don't know anyone who's done anything half so bad as crucifying God's son, which means that I should be able to forgive and love everyone in my life.  Easier said than done, but with God all things are possible.