In a great, underappreciated Book of Mormon passage, the Savior Himself directs a stirring appeal to the book’s latter-day readers: “And whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do good,” He says, “is of me; for good cometh of none save it be
of me. I am the same that leadeth men to all good” (Ether 4:12).

When I was eighteen, I joined a group of
prospective BYU students for a seder feast at Passover time hosted by Professor Victor Ludlow. During that memorable evening, Professor Ludlow taught us a traditional Passover song called “Dayenu”, which translates roughly as “it would have been enough.” The song recounts the history of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt by identifying several divine interventions, any one of which “would have been enough.”

Saturday morning, early. Miriam starts to squirm and fuss. Wearily, blearily, I scoop her up and whisk her away before Lia awakens. I wrap my baby girl in a favorite swaddling blanket and retreat to our basement lair while the rest of the house sleeps on.

President Nelson turns 100 (!) next week. Someone recently asked me, “If those in their eighties are called octogenarians, what do we call those in their nineties?” “Nonagenarians,” I answered, “but President Nelson will soon be a centenarian.” How grateful we are for our centenarian prophet!

Poison dart frogs (dendrobatidae) are famous for two features: their beguiling coloration and their intensely toxic skin. These two attributes, it turns out, are correlated. But the toxicity of poison dart frogs is not inherent in their nature; it is a product of their diet. They consume toxic arthropods, whose toxins they then absorb and secrete. When poison dart frogs’ diet varies, their toxicity declines. Fed a non-toxic diet in captivity, they lose their toxicity entirely.

An admired mentor once called my attention to a single sentence from the Book of Isaiah: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary” (Isa. 50:4). It was my duty, my mentor taught me, to use whatever learning I might acquire, and whatever gifts of expression I might develop, to bring comfort and strength to my weary fellow Saints.

A broad university education—so our mission statement declares—should help students “establish clear standards of intellectual integrity."1 For a long time I read this as a call for honesty in matters of the mind—an injunction to avoid cheating, to eschew plagiarism, to tell the truth without counting the cost.

A story, probably apocryphal, has it that J.B.S. Haldane, the influential twentieth-century British-Indian biologist, was once asked what his study of evolutionary biology had taught him about the mind of the Creator. It had taught him, Haldane supposedly replied, that the Creator must have “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”

In one of our greatest Easter anthems—indeed, one of the greatest of all Christian hymns—we sing this stirring profession of faith:

Early in his tenure at the helm of BYU, President Jeffrey R. Holland proposed for our campus a three-word Latin mantra: Virtus et Veritas—virtue and truth. Veritas, of course, was familiar from the mottos of Harvard and Yale. But President Holland worried that the academy at large was abandoning its traditional concern with character education—with virtue.

“Among those that are born of women,” the Savior said, “there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist” (Luke 7:28). That is striking praise from the ultimate Source.

January 7, 2021. It was too late, really, to be singing Christmas hymns. Two weeks had passed since that high holy day. A new year had dawned; winter semester was underway. But in the stillness of that delivery room in the Orem Community Hospital - with Lia resting exhaustedly in bed and our new baby boy sleeping peacefully in my arms - I figured I could sing what I pleased.

When I was in the MTC, our district had a theme song of sorts: the hymn “For All the Saints.” We sang it often and with brio. We sang it again in the mission home, tearfully, at the opposite end of our mission.

Before the beginning was the Covenant.

"Everlasting covenant," said the Prophet Joseph Smith, "was made between three personages before the organization of this earth and related to their dispensation of things to men on the earth. These personages, according to Abraham's record, are called God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the Witness or Testator."

President Nelson turns ninety-nine this week: 99 on 9/9. Such a milestone prompts gratitude for his ministry and reflection on his teachings. During his presidential tenure, I have seen the prophetic mantle descend on President Nelson in an indelible and undeniable way. When he speaks in his prophetic office, the world around me seems to fade, and his words sail straight to my soul.

I was doing just fine until I saw my wife’s face. There we were, just a few days ago, standing in the MTC’s underground parking lot, sending our oldest daughter into the mission field. I looked up from handing Julia’s luggage to a missionary attendant only to see Lia’s tear-streaked face as she fiercely hugged our firstborn farewell.

In January 1833, Joseph Smith wrote from Kirtland to Church leaders in Missouri. The Prophet included with his letter a priceless attachment—one of the longest and most breathtaking revelations of his entire career.

It was early morning, and the law school building was quiet and still. I walked to my office through mostly empty halls. As I approached my office door, I saw a student at the far end of the hall, sitting on a bench alone. I felt a distinct impression. “He is having a hard time,” the Spirit nudged. “Go talk to him.”

It had been a very long day. The sun was setting behind the northwestern Italian mountains as my missionary companion and I trudged wearily to the last house in the row. It was my turn to ring the bell and make our pitch over the intercom. I offered a variation on our usual introduction before receiving an unusual reply.

When I was young, I knew exactly what I was going to do when I grew up: I would play professional basketball, break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s (now LeBron James’s) all-time scoring record, as well as John Stockton’s all-time assists record, and lead the Jazz to our first—indeed, our first ten or twelve—NBA championships.

Years ago, toward the end of an unforgettable semester, a beloved BYU professor invited our class to his house for a Saturday morning pancake breakfast. Spouses were invited too and, invited or not, we brought our infant daughter as well.

The setting was spectacular: the terrace of a centuries-old monastery overlooking the ancient city of Florence. The setting sun had bathed in flame the stunning cupola of Brunelleschi's duomo.

A decade ago, I watched our six-year-old daughter (now sixteen) devour a watermelon with unmitigated relish. She gobbled slice after slice down to the narrowest strip of green. I later tried to capture the moment in a sprightly little poem:

Four days after we arrived in Connecticut to start law school, our four-month-old daughter, Elisabeth, was diagnosed with hydrocephalus. Her cerebral-spinal fluid wasn’t properly passing from one brain ventricle to the next.

Years ago, I read a simple recollection from President Boyd K. Packer that struck me with what the scriptures call “a familiar spirit” (2 Ne. 26:16). “On one of my rare days at home,” he wrote,

I first learned about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and martyr of the anti-Nazi Resistance, as a BYU undergraduate. Later, while researching for my dissertation, I examined the personal papers of Gerhard Leibholz, Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law and a famous German judge.

Twenty years ago, while serving as a missionary in Milan, I did something unusual—at least for me. I wrote a letter of praise to my district leader, telling him how much I admired the compassion, kindness, and energy with which he led our district and loved the people in our area.