What Temple Square Teaches About Change
Cherish the ground you walk on. Honor the influences that uphold you. They’re always there—until they’re not.
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Author: Samuel B. Hislop
Samuel B. Hislop is a writer for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has also written for the Deseret News, Real Clear Religion, and Faith Counts. He has a master's degree from Southern Utah University.
An Ode to the Old Testament
The word “old” isn’t exactly the most exciting word in the English language. And it’s easy to miss out on the beauties of ancient prophetic witness if we allow that word to encapsulate our feelings about the Old Testament.
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How Islam Is Bringing Me Clarity This Christmas
As we think of Jesus during the holidays, let us consider His filial relationship with the Father and what it means to be a family ruled by love and unity.
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How to Speak the ‘Whole Language’ of Jesus
Can followers of Christ speak the “whole language” without considering the entirety of the very language of Jesus that makes us whole? A review of Fr. Gregory Boyle’s book, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness.
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Recognizing Our Need for Rebirth
The COVID-19 pandemic is a once-in-a-century experience that should be reforming us at the soul level. Is it?
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Bites of the Best Books: April 2021
This month we feature passages from Tolstoy on the struggles of the spiritual life and David Brooks on
the importance of building moral character.
Stay a While by the Cross this Easter
Christianity’s darkest day gives surprising hope for all those with a “cross to bear.”
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Bites of the Best Books: March 2021
This month, passages about the most potent moral figure in Western culture, the influences on Augustine,
and the enduring wisdom of the prophet Jeremiah.
Bites of the Best Books: February 2021
This month, passages on the unending quest for knowledge, what we should pray for, and the importance of charitable thinking.
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The Challenge of Chosenness
With a new year comes a new focus of study for Latter-day Saints—and an opportunity to think more expansively about what “the Church” is.
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Bites of the Best Books: January 2021
This month, passages on rebirth, the pursuit of utopia, why we are commanded to honor parents, the importance of welcoming a God who can contradict us, and the need to embrace interfaith solidarity.
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Bites of the Best Books: December 2020
This month, passages on the dangers of political power for the religious, the problem of idealizing the
past, the need for deep souls, and the instructive power of pain.
The 2020 Vision of Joseph Smith and George Orwell
True, people can be self-interested, calculating, megalomaniacal, partisan, and power-hungry. But God sees the whole person—and so should we.
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Rabbi Sacks, the Snow, and Our Common Humanity
As the election dust settles and the snow falls, some thoughts on something deeper than our many differences – a witness born most eloquently by the remarkable and recently deceased Rabbi Sacks.
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Bites of the Best Books: November 2020
Five books that contain sentences and paragraphs and pages full of unique ideas that move our minds, touch our hearts, and fill our souls with light.
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The Steep Price of Hypocrisy in Christian Witness
The battle with sin is our shared inheritance. Nobody is immune to a fall from grace. We must pray that our Father “suffer us not to be led into temptation” and then live to make that a reality.
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Bites of the Best Books: October 2020
Five books that contain sentences and paragraphs and pages full of unique ideas that move our minds, touch our hearts, and fill our souls with light.
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A Book of Mormon Missive for the 2020 Election
Can a country founded on the idea that all of us are created equal accept Jesus’s admonition to see contention as the devilish delusion that it is?
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Bites of the Best Books: September 2020
Five books that contain sentences and paragraphs and pages full of unique ideas that move our minds, touch our hearts, and fill our souls with light.
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Why Aren’t We There Yet as a Society? A Latter-day Saint Case for Hope
In response to those sensitive souls asking, “Why am I not there yet as a person?” or “Why are we not there yet as a society?” Latter-day Saint theology offers a patient optimism for steady growth in us and around us—along with the anticipation of collective light to become “brighter and brighter until the perfect day.”
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