Genesis 18-23

NEXT WEEK

Genesis 24-27

ABRAHAM’S HOSPITALITY

“Hospitality is really important in traditional Middle Eastern cultures. And by traditional I mean, not the Babylonians, but the Bedouins, [who] in some ways are the oldest form of Middle Eastern culture. Even today one of the greetings that you have in Arabic when people come means ‘welcome to my house, you've come to family and this is a good place to camp. You should spend the night here.’

Hugh Nibley retells the story of Abraham in the desert from a Jewish apocryphal source. He [recounts] how Abraham is not only welcoming to the guest, he's out there, it's a terrible burning hot day, dusty, the wind blowing horrible. And he is looking for stragglers in the desert. He says, I will not eat until I've helped some poor soul out here in the desert. According to that Jewish apocrypha, that's when the three travelers come and he's given the gift of his son and so on. It's not just an arbitrary thing according to that story. It's rewarding Abraham for his faithfulness and his hospitality, his sheer goodness.”

Dr. Daniel Peterson, Follow Him Podcast

COUNSELING WITH GOD

“Throughout the whole Old Testament we read of constant failure, constant promises being not fully realized by the people that received the promise. Logic contributed to this question of how we interact with a God who promises us wonderful things, but lets us suffer so much. This idea of arguing with God, which is a richly Jewish idea, is a main component of honest and real relationship with the being of creation.

Abraham stood boldly before the Lord and inquired [about His intentions] to destroy the righteous with the wicked. This is especially significant to Hebrews who understand the majesty and terror of God. He remains there until God agrees that he won’t destroy the city if there are 10 righteous among them.”

Aaron Gorner, BYU Maxwell Institute, Abide Podcast

COUNSELING WITH GOD

“When we have real honest conversations with God, when we confront God with the suffering, with the reality of the situation that we have endured and how we feel towards Him, it allows us to develop a discipleship based on real connection. When we have access to a real connection we have access to God’s true nature. That’s why this (confronting God) is such a rich idea and so important because they have suffered so much they have fostered this type of discipleship that can be based on truth.”

Aaron Gorner, BYU Maxwell Institute, Abide Podcast

The following quotes by Valerie Hudson are taken from an hour long address given at the Fair Latter-day Saints Conference. She also has a longer article on this topic which can be found at Square Two Journal. We barley scratched the surface. I encourage you to read the entire article for a full understanding.

 ABRAHAMIC SACRIFICE

“Now, what is an Abrahamic Sacrifice? Let’s make sure that we understand that. Sacrifice is one of the first principles of a gospel — we know that, and we know that there are various forms of sacrifice. For example, we might say that we are sacrificing to send a child on a mission. That sacrifice is by our own choice, and we know that the goal is one that we desire.

Another type of sacrifice might be to accept the consequences of doing the right thing. We might be ostracized or oppressed because our belief and behavior by those who believe otherwise towards us is unpleasant. However, it’s our choice and we are very much desirous of that goal.

A third type of sacrifice appears from our mortal perspective maybe not to involve agency, though I believe some agency was involved. These are sacrifices of adversity, for example, where an innocent child is born with an imperfect body, or accidents or illness take the health or life of persons. We don’t think of those as conscious mortal choices, but some of us believe that they were pre-mortal conscious choices about some of these things.

But the heaviest sacrifice a person can ever be called upon to make — the Abrahamic sacrifice is slightly different from these other three. In the Abrahamic sacrifice, we are asked by God to make a conscious choice in a situation where what he requires of us cannot be regarded as a desired goal from all that we know about God’s laws."

A Reconciliation of Polygamy, V. H. Cassler, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2011/a- reconciliation-of-polygamy

ABRAHAMIC SACRIFICE

“The Lord has apparently chosen to explain his reasoning and reveal his mind on polygamy in terms of a specific analogy between two situations that occurred to one man, Abraham. The Lord’s subsequent explanation of polygamy centers around an analogy the Lord himself posits between his commandment to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and his commandment to Abraham to marry Hagar polygamously.

Now, given the importance of his children having a correct understanding of their Father’s mind on this topic, we cannot believe that this analogy was chosen capriciously. This is not an arbitrary analogy being made, and since it is the only analogy being made, we must pay attention to it and try to understand why that analogy was chosen.

The first and most telling point to note about the analogy is that the story of Isaac is a story of sacrifice. The Lord is telling us that the term “Abrahamic sacrifice” refers not only to the story of Isaac but applies to the story of Hagar as well.

Before the Lord even delves into the analogy, his very positing of an analogy between the Isaac situation and the Hagar situation is revealing. Of all the possible analogies of sacrifice that God has commanded in the history of the world (sacrifice of animals under the Mosaic law; sacrifice of possessions under the law of consecration; sacrifice of home and country as the early saints did in crossing the plains; sacrifice of your own life as Joseph Smith and others have done), God chooses the most wrenching sacrifice he has ever commanded to serve as the analogy wherewith to instruct us concerning polygamy — the sacrifice of one’s own innocent child by one’s own hand. This choice of analogy by the Lord is meant to reveal to us that in the Lord’s eyes the Hagar situation is no light matter or run-of- the-mill sacrifice but rather is like unto the heaviest and most heart-wrenching of all sacrifices God has ever required of man.

In positing this analogy then we get a parallel, and that parallel is being commanded to kill your innocent son is analogist to being commanded to marry polygamously. Why, because murder is as grievous as sin as adultery and vice versa.”

A Reconciliation of Polygamy, V. H. Cassler, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2011/a-reconciliation-of-polygamy

ABRAHAMIC SACRIFICE

“An Abrahamic sacrifice involves at least three elements that are to be found in the story of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac: 1. God makes plain to Abraham a law, “thou shalt not kill;” 2. God then requires Abraham, an innocent and righteous man, to depart from that law, sacrifice Isaac, an innocent child, and the choice to depart therefrom would seem to erase any joy in Abraham’s life, because the true happiness is to be found under the law — don’t kill Isaac; and 3. God provides a means of escape from the departure from the law — an angel is sent to stay the hand of Abraham, and the ram in the thicket is provided by the Lord, which allows renewed joy from being able to live under the law — don’t kill Isaac — once more.”

A Reconciliation of Polygamy, V. H. Cassler, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2011/a-reconciliation-of-polygamy

ABRAHAMIC SACRIFICE

“Being happy about the commandment to practice an Abrahamic sacrifice does not seem to factor into the counting of one’s obedience as righteousness. After all, a sacrifice remains a sacrifice despite the paradoxical joy experienced. We know this principle from many situations. “Murmuring” against the law is not acceptable, but crying out to the Lord in innocent anguish — anguish felt as a result of obeying God’s commands — is not condemned.

We know this because Christ himself cried out in pain and anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane. And he cried out in pain and anguish on the cross at Calvary. He initially felt to shrink from drinking the bitter cup. He even asked Heavenly Father why he had forsaken him.

Christ was making a sacrifice not justified under the law. His death was a departure from the divine law. If Christ himself was not thought less of by God for expressing suffering caused by a departure from divine law, why would God require mere mortals to be stoic when suffering pain caused by righteous obedience to a commandment to depart from the law? The answer is that he does not. When Abraham was asked to make a sacrifice not justified under the law, his heart mourned and we do not think less of him for it. We know God loved Abraham with great intensity. In truth, if God wept with Christ in Gethsemane in Calvary, if he wept with Abraham on the road to Mount Moriah, did he not also weep when Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and other righteous polygamous wives and husbands wept? The Lord’s own analogy leads us to believe that he did.”

A Reconciliation of Polygamy, V. H. Cassler, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2011/a-reconciliation-of-polygamy

ABRAHAMIC SACRIFICE

“Surely God is not so fragile, so lacking in empathy, that He would take offense at our incredulity or our anger in the face of the world’s wounds. For our pain is already His. As a theologian who lost his own son wrote, “Through our tears, we see the tears of God.” And believing, as Mormons do, that God is the infinitely suffering God of Enoch, not the “impassive, unresponsive” God “portrayed by the classical theologians,” this writer added a poignant possibility: “It is said of God that no one can behold His face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could behold His splendor and live. . . . Perhaps it meant that no one could see His sorrow and live.”

Givens, Terryl; Givens, Fiona. The Crucible of Doubt

ABRAHAMIC SACRIFICE

“By offering to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham regains Isaac forever. This is a very important element of any Abrahamic sacrifice: it is always eventually brought to an end by God. The lifting of the exceptional commandment comes as a tangible relief to Abraham.

Why does the Lord bring this relief? We can only reiterate that it is because God is not indifferent between a state of sacrifice and a state of relief, and that all other things being equal, he actively prefers eventual relief to perpetual sacrifice for his innocent children.

Lest we mistake this natural Fatherly preference, Christ asks rhetorically, “What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” The great sacrifice to which Abraham’s sacrifice points, the atonement, was also brought to an end by God.

His sacrifice ended. We sing of Christ: “Once rejected by his own now their King, he shall be known. Once forsaken, left alone, now exalted to a throne. Once he groaned in blood and tears, now in glory he appears. Once he suffered grief and pain, now he comes on earth to reign. Once upon the cross he bowed, now his chariot is the cloud. Once all things he meekly bore, but he now will bear no more.”

A Reconciliation of Polygamy, V. H. Cassler, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2011/a-reconciliation-of-polygamy

 

Genesis 12-18; Abraham 1-2

NEXT WEEK

Genesis 18 (second half)-27 

ABRAM

“With God’s calling of Abram out of the post-Babel peoples, the story of God’s ways with humankind shifts focus from the universal history to the history of God’s relationship with a particular person and people. Here begins the history of his saving work, in which human sin is not only judged (the flood) or restrained (Babel) but forgiven (through atonement) and overcome (through purifying human hearts). Throughout the rest of scripture the unfolding of this history remains the golden thread and central theme. Its final outcome is made sure through Jesus Christ, “the son of Abraham” which is the core message of the New Testament.”

NIV Study Bible, pg. 33

RELIGION IN NOMADIC CLANS

“In patriarchal communities, religious practices and beliefs were transmitted through family life rather than through a priest or other religious figure. Marriage and family were considered sacred and foundational in a person’s relationship with God. Children were perceived as gifts, and parents were stewards for God in caring for them.

The patriarch as proxy for God was divinely directed to protect and provide for the clan. Each individual family member had direct access to God, without a need to go through the patriarch.

One could argue that, as keepers of the home in this society, the chief wife of the patriarch enjoyed status and privilege as great as women have ever been afforded in the history of the world.”

Women of the Old Testament, Camille Fronk Olsen, pg 27

ABRAHAM

“In the space of three chapters Abraham has gone to Egypt and back, been blessed with great wealth, settled in the land of Canaan, battled Kings of the region to retrieve Lot and his property, been blessed by Melchizedek of Salem and paid tithes. His wealth has grown, fame has spread and Jehovah’s promises are being fulfilled. But he has no children to inherit either his wealth or his name. And it is not yet clear how God will fulfill the promise to make his offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth . . . yet he trusts the promises of God.”

Christian Hill, Abide, BYU Maxwell Institute Podcast, Genesis 12-17, Abraham 1-2

CUTTING COVENANTS

“From what we know of second millennium BC covenant rituals, it seems clear that Jehovah condescended to cut a covenant with Abram. Instead of a parity treaty or loyalty oath on Abram’s part, God instructed Abram to slaughter three animals and divide them so he could demonstrate the absolute surety of his promises. Evidently, the smoking furnace and burning lamp represented God’s presence, analogous to the cloud and pillar of fire that accompanied Israel later (see Exodus 13:21–22). Thus the implication is that the Lord passed between the divided animals and, in effect, swore an oath that he would lose his own life if he did not give Abram and his seed the land for an inheritance.[31] This idea is supported by Jehovah’s later revelation wherein he confirmed the same promise of land to Isaac, saying, “Unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father” (Genesis 26:3). Since God cannot swear by anything greater than his own life (see Hebrews 6:13), Jehovah’s promise could not have been more sure. Certainly this was an extremely powerful message to Abram, a man who lived in various places in the ancient Near East and who must have been very familiar with covenant-cutting practices.”

Jared T. Parker, https://rsc.byu.edu/gospel-jesus-christ-old-testament/cutting-covenants

THE COVENANT OF GRANT

[This covenant as recorded here in the Bible requires nothing of Abraham.] “It is known as a Covenant of Grant, which the Jewish Study Bible says is a reward for past loyalty. It does not involve any obligation upon the grantee. What we see here and we will see it again throughout the story of Abraham is God’s extravagant generosity towards His children, this desire to bless and to show His love and to give blessings to His children.”

Christian Hill, Abide, BYU Maxwell Institute Podcast, Genesis 12-17, Abraham 1-2 t

THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT

“The Abrahamic Covenant comes in a series of three covenantal interactions between God and Abraham, which build upon each other. Through these interactions, three over-arching promises are made by God: (1) Abraham would be given land; (2) from him would come a great nation; and (3) through God’s blessing of Abraham and his descendants the whole world would be blessed.

Key aspects of this covenant are its unconditional elements, its universal benefit, and its everlasting nature. The promises that God gave to Abraham do not require any righteous actions on Abraham’s part and are therefore considered unconditional in nature. God bears the responsibility of the covenant fulfillment by participating in a self-maledictory covenantal ceremony (stipulating symbolically that He Himself will bear the consequences should the covenant be broken by any party). God does, however, call Abraham to live in loyalty and faithfulness with Him in response to divine grace.”

NIV Study Bible, pg. 34

THE CHARACTER OF GOD

“ALL OF SALVATION IS ULTIMATELY THIS GRAND GESTURE OF EXTRAVAGANT GRACE. At the center of this is having this trust and faith in the person of God, in God’s faithfulness, in God’s commitment to fulfilling his covenants. The great revelation here as we read the Old Testament is the revelation of the character of God.”

Christian Hill, Abide, BYU Maxwell Institute Podcast, Genesis 12-17, Abraham 1-2 t

SARAH AND HAGAR

“Sarah and Hagar came from dramatically different backgrounds and divergent social classes. Yet they shared a moment in history that established God’s covenant as a means to bless the world but not without a variety of interpretations and concerns.

The simple fact that two women seemingly in competition for the same blessing from opposing angles appear in the same story is enough to invite serious debate and unfair comparisons. A common argument contends that because Sarah and Hagar disagreed at times and were dissimilar in many ways, they were the complete opposite of each other. Therefore, the argument concludes that one of them was righteous and loved by God, whereas the other made bad choices and was spiritually rejected. Because Hagar was an integral part of the family for less time than Sarah and bore a son who was not foreordained to be the covenant leader, the temptation is to paint her as the nemesis, the intruder, the foreigner to faith. The biblical text, however, does not allow such an interpretation.”

Women of the Old Testament, Camille Fronk Olsen, pg 29

SARAH AND HAGAR

“In scriptural text, Hagar is referred to as a ‘concubine’. With none of the immoral overtones inherent in the label today, a concubine in the ancient Near East was a legal wife who was elevated from servant status by her marriage. Her increased status did not, however, equal that of the chief wife, who was always a free woman. Although the legitimate wife to her husband, a concubine remained a servant to her mistress, who could discipline or sell her at will. Receiving free status and giving birth often added confusion to her status in the family and threatened to reverse her importance with that of the chief wife. The ancient Babylonian law rescinded freedom and status should a concubine assume equality with her mistress.

Sarai’s remorse after Hagar became pregnant may have been out of fear that Hagar would supplant her as chief wife. Likewise, Hagar’s ‘despising’ of Sarai suggests that Sarai’s importance and status had diminished in Hagar’s eyes. The distinction between authority and possession begins to blur.”

Women of the Old Testament, Camille Fronk Olsen, pg 29

HAGAR

“Their dialogue begins with an almost ritual question: ‘Hagar, slave-woman of Sarai, where are you coming from and to where are you going?’ The angel addresses her by name, for he knows who she is. She answers simply, “From the presence of Sarai my mistress I am fleeing.” It doesn’t matter where she is going: the essential fact is that she is fleeing Sarai. The reader feels the pathos of the oppressed slave, but the angel says, ‘Return to your mistress and be oppressed under her hand.’

Angels usually have threefold messages, and this one does, too. The first part, Return ... and be oppressed; the second part, ‘Greatly will I multiply your seed so that it cannot be counted’; the third, ‘you are pregnant, and you are going to give birth to a son and you will call his name Ishmael (‘God hears’), for God has heard your oppression.'

The second address makes Hagar the only woman to receive a divine promise of seed, not through a man but as her own destiny. And the third statement puts Hagar in the company of those few women— Samson’s mother, Hannah, and Mary in the New Testament, who receive a divine annunciation of the coming birth. And what a birth! Hagar will have a glorious progeny who can never be exploited or subjected—if she voluntarily goes back to be exploited. And so Hagar goes back. Recognizing the divine power, she neither argues nor avoids the request. But before she gives up her autonomy, she exercises it by naming God according to her own experience. God called Hagar by name, the only character in the story to do so, and Hagar responds, naming God El Roi, “God of my seeing,” which can mean both “the God I have seen” and “the God who sees me.”

Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Reading the Women of the Bible (pp. 230-231). 

Genesis 6-11, Moses 8

NEXT WEEK 

Genesis 12-17, Abraham 1-2

MICVAH

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PGfvqBl-3Ao

PERSPECTIVE

“It's interesting because I do think that in the past, we've taken a very literal approach to the Bible. And that was considered the only faith-based approach. And now today, we've started to realize that there are many faith-based approaches to the Bible. Just even talking about the Flood, for example, you can believe in a global universal Flood that was a miracle, and that's fine. You can believe that it was more of a regional Flood.

So when they talk about the world or the earth, they're talking about their world, the world that they knew. And there's evidence of flood deposits in Mesopotamia and other places. And that's also a faith-based approach. And this is going back to this idea of being open minded about things.

I love that we can accept different points of view, even though I think we struggle with that. We want a nice tidy package. We want, ‘This means this and it can mean nothing else.’ But that's not how scripture works, that's not necessarily how these things work.

Dr. Krystal L. Pierce, Follow Him Podcast

SONS OF GOD

“[Moses gives a] little more information. Noah was considered a son of God because he listened to God, and his daughters were daughters of God because they listened to God. But the problem was they married those who weren't listening to God, the sons of men. And so once they married them their behavior changed. They were influenced by them. They were affected by them. And then they changed from daughters of God to daughters of men at that point. So it's just a way of talking about somebody's being, really honestly, righteous or wicked.”

Dr. Krystal L. Pierce, Follow Him Podcast

“REPENTED”

“There's something a little bit different going on here, and this word that's translated as repent here is the Hebrew word nacham.

Naham is such a great word because it appears all over the Old Testament. And every time it appears, it's translated in a different way. So people struggle with its meaning. And actually what's great is this word shows up in the Book of Mormon too as the place where Ishmael was buried on the way to the promised land, he was buried at Naham. Half of this word means grieving, sadness, mourning, being in pain. But the other side of nachum, and this is why people struggle with it because it almost seems like the opposite, it also means to be comforted. It also means to be consoled. It also means to feel content. I think people struggle because they say, "How can you feel sadness and comfort at the same time? How can you be mourning, but also feel consoled?"

Dr. Krystal L. Pierce, Follow Him Podcast

 TSOHAR

“There's this Jewish rabbinical tradition that, when God created Adam, one of the things he did was he put his light; God's light in a stone, so that Adam would always have the light of God with him. And Adam passed this stone down. He passed it down until it got to Noah. And the tradition goes that Noah used it to light the Ark. And so the tsohar was actually this lighted stone that Noah had. And then the tradition continues. He passed it down. It eventually went to Moses, who used it to light the tabernacle, so that there was always this light of God with the prophets and being passed down.”

Dr. Krystal L. Pierce, Follow Him Podcast

 NOAH AND THE ARK

“If we fancy Noah riding the sunny seas high, dry and snug in the Ark, we have not read the record—the long, hopeless struggle against entrenched mass resistance to his preaching, the deepening gloom and desperation of the year leading up to the final debacle, then the unleashed forces of nature, with the family absolutely terrified, weeping and praying ‘because they were at the gates of death’ as the Ark was thrown about with the greatest violence by terrible winds and titanic seas...Finally, Noah went forth into a world of utter desolation, as Adam did, to build his altar, call upon God, and try to make a go of it all over again, only to see some his progeny on short order prefer Satan to God and lose all the rewards that his toil and sufferings had put in their reach.”

Hugh Nibley, Scriptures Plus Instagram

 ZIGGURATS

“We actually have about 25 examples of enormous towers in Mesopotamia, and these are called ziggurats. Most biblical scholars believe that the tower of Babel was a ziggurat. They were made out of burnt bricks. That's a good connection. They're basically these towers of narrowing platforms. A big platform on the bottom and it gets narrower to another platform, and another one and another one, all the way up to the top. And these things could be huge, as big as 300 feet on one side, and as tall as 200 feet up in the air.

They were completely filled with rubble, and dirt and sand and things like that. They had this ramp or stairs going up to the top. So we find out in archeology texts, that the reason they build these is first, to make it so that God could come down to earth. If they build it up into heaven it makes it possible for God to be able to use the ramp and the staircase, and come down and visit earth, and go to the temple and be worshiped.

The other purpose was to make it so that God would stay on earth, that he wouldn't go back to heaven. And so on the very top of these ziggurats, there was a bedroom, an empty room, that they built for God. And inside the room was a bed and a table, and the priest would go up and they'd make the bed all nice, and they'd set the table with food and drink. And there was a chair. So their hope was that God would come down. He would live in this tower, so they would reach into heaven, be able to access God, bring him down. They would make a name for themselves, because if God's living in your city, on your ziggurat, then you're going to be famous. This kind of idea, if we can get God to live in our tower, in the ziggurat, then we won't be scattered. We can convince him this is where we need to stay.”

Dr. Krystal L. Pierce, Follow Him Podcast

INSIGHTS FROM THE STORY OF NOAH

What do we learn about the nature of God from the story of Noah and the story of the Tower of Babel?

How did the understanding of God’s nature inform their behaviors and how does it inform ours?`````        

Genesis 4-5; Moses 5-7

 NEXT WEEK

Genesis 6-11, Moses 8

ENOCH

“There is no single event or influence in the life of Jospeh Smith that was more transformative and shaping of his future ministry than encountering Enoch as a figure.”

Terryl Givens, BYU Maxwell Institute Podcast

ENOCH’S INFLUENCE ON JOSEPH SMITH

“The Enoch text sowed the seeds of Mormonism’s most distinctive and vibrant doctrines: It produced the most emphatic version of a passible deity the Christian world then knew (a God of passions and emotions). It catalyzed Latter-day Saint understanding of and enthusiasm for the doctrine of premortal existence. It foreshadowed, and might more vitally inform, the church’s distinctive doctrine of theosis or divinization. And perhaps most importantly, it provided Joseph with the distinctive contours of his own prophetic vocation as a builder of Zion. If the Book of Mormon lent Joseph his indispensable aura of prophetic authority, the prophecy of Enoch provided a personal role model to inspire him and a blueprint to direct him.”

Terryl Givens, https://www.terrylgivens.com/talks/2021/5/19/the-prophecy-of-enoch-as-restoration-blueprint

A GOD WHO WEEPS

“Clearly, Enoch, who believed God to be “merciful and kind forever,” did not expect such a being could be moved to the point of distress by the sins of His children. And so a third time he asks, ‘how is it thou canst weep?’ The answer, it turns out, is that God is not exempt from emotional pain. Exempt? On the contrary, God’s pain is as infinite as His love. He weeps because He feels compassion. It is not their wickedness, but their “misery,” not their disobedience, but their “suffering,” that elicits the God of Heaven’s tears. Not until Gethsemane and Golgotha does the scriptural record reveal so unflinchingly the costly investment of God’s love in His people, the price at which He placed His heart upon them. There could be nothing in this universe, or in any possible universe, more perfectly good, absolutely beautiful, worthy of adoration, and deserving of emulation, than this God of love and kindness and vulnerability. That is why a gesture of belief in His direction, a decision to acknowledge His virtues as the paramount qualities of a divided universe, is a response to the best in us, the best and noblest of which the human soul is capable. A God without body or parts is conceivable. But a God without passions would engender in our hearts neither love nor interest. In the vision of Enoch, we find ourselves drawn to a God who prevents all the pain He can, assumes all the suffering He can, and weeps over the misery He can neither prevent nor assume.”

Givens, Terryl; Fiona Givens. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life 

"Women Wielding Power: How the Women of the Old Testament Teach the Women of the Present Day." 

I keep forgetting to post my granddaughter's article. Grace is remarkable and I'm so grateful for her. Here is the link to the paper, "Women Wielding Power:How the Women of the Old Testament Teach the Women of the Present Day." 

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGllVlFGqjGKqRDDgbvLxCpPCpk?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1