WEDNESDAY, AUG. 22 — One of the great things about Education Week is that you have so many opportunities to learn about yourself. I discovered in my first class Tuesday that I am not cut out for the larger classes. I went to Joseph McConkie's class on spiritual gifts. The subject was good, as was the speaker, but the ballroom at the Wilk did not allow for much interaction between the speaker and the audience, which I crave. In smaller classes by C. Robert Line (Parables of Jesus) and Lynda Christian Cherry (Importance of
Names) I enjoyed much more dialogue between the speaker and the audience.
I've always liked the parable of the Prodigal Son (the subject of Brother Line's class for Tuesday) but my understanding of the many implications runs much deeper now. My favorite: "Satan wants to confuse two doctrines — the doctrine of the creation, which tells us who we are, and the doctrine of the fall, which tells us what condition we are in." Though the prodigal son was guilty of such sin he was his father's son, not a hired servant.
(David Miller is the father of four children who works on software customization and support while his wife, Laura, "creates the Zion I come home to." He is a Young Men leader and writes about social/political topics on his personal blog at http://www.davidjmiller.org.)