No matter where you go, the basketball standard remains 10 feet high. It doesn’t change to accommodate your ability. In the same way, the standard works give us a fixed target to shoot for: we cannot ask the expectations to change for us, but must apply ourselves to meeting the gospel’s standards.
In life, as in Cracker Jacks, you have to go through lots of peanuts and popcorn before you find the prize. Listening with our spiritual ears, we learn that despite our failings and trials, if we continue to sort through the challenges and fluff, we can find gifts and talents inside us that we don’t even know about yet.
Meet Ranger Bytheway in Isaiah National Forest for a brief lesson on the four types of trees, or chapters, in Isaiah: Covenants, Christ, Current Events, and Coming Events. Range Bytheway also gives four keys and names four guides to help you navigate the trail and start seeing the Isaiah forest for its trees.
The example of one man, whose life philosophy is to choose to be happy, teaches us a lot about the power in our choices. Although such is easier said than done, if even after being shot, someone can choose to have a sense of humor, we can choose to do something much simpler, like being happy on a bad day or getting something out of church.
The story of the Stripling warriors illustrates much needed morals for our lives today. Echoing those principles taught in the Church proclamation on the family, we can learn from this example how mothers and fathers help each other in their familial responsibilities to teach, provide for, and protect their children.