Keep the House Occupied!

There is a beautiful parable in the writings of Luke (11:24-26) that tells of an unclean spirit that is cast out of a man (the unclean spirit's home) by repentance and seeks a new place to reside. The unclean spirit wanders through desert places and finding no new home decides to return to his original home. When he arrives he finds that the house has indeed been swept clean, but it is empty and so the evil spirit invites seven other unclean spirits to join him and they all enter in and dwell there so that the man ends up worse off than he was in the beginning.

The moral of the parable is that even though the man repented and swept his house clean, he didn’t fill himself with something new and good so the old, evil spirit easily returned.

The interesting thing about this is that modern psychological research has shown that in the pursuit of happiness it doesn’t work to just stop doing what is making you unhappy. To become a happy person a major break with the status quo needs to happen. You need to not only stop doing the negative things, you need to replace them with positive things.

Happiness is a choice! It takes work and effort, but everyone who wants happiness can have it. The promise of the Good News! is that man was created to experience joy! (See 2 Nephi 2:25.) and by choosing to occupy ourselves with good, positive things we crowd out the bad.

Christmas is Good News

I hope your Christmas celebration filled you with joy, love, and hope. That's what it is meant to do, but if we get too caught up in the materialism of gift giving and getting, that doesn't happen. Instead we pass through Christmas stressed, fatigued, disappointed, and weary. But if we take time to remember what Christmas is all about, the joy overshadows any of the stressful things. That's why I thank all of you for celebrating Christmas with me here on Good News! It gave me the opportunity to spend time thinking about the Good News. After all, the birth of Jesus Christ is the best news that ever was. He is The Good News--the very best news that has ever been given.

I've loved researching more about the events that were the original Christmas, and sharing what I know and what I've learned with you has made my Christmas very meaningful. I hope in some small way it has contributed to your Christmas celebration also.

So thank you for stopping by, and I hope you will continue to visit Good News! all year long. I love having company!

Easter is Coming!

Easter is coming! 

It's the celebration of the greatest event that ever occurred upon the earth, 

and like Ammon I find myself thinking,

“Behold, who can glory too much in the Lord?
Yea, who can say too much of his great power,
and of his mercy,
and of his long-suffering towards the children of men?
Behold, I say unto you,
I cannot say the smallest part which I feel”
(Alma 26:16).

Jesus Christ is the Good News! and I am so grateful for good news. And what is the Good News? Jesus Christ saved me and you from eternal misery. (See 2 Nephi 9:8-9). I know how awful I feel when times are bad, when I do things wrong, when I’m in pain, when I’m sorrowing. I’ve tasted misery enough to know I don’t like it. But I’ve only tasted misery piece at a time, one aspect of misery at a time. But without the Atonement of Jesus Christ I’d have to live in all the misery there is forever with no possibility of escape. 

Misery weighs on me, eats at me, saps my strength, hurts me deep! But because of my Savior, I not only can escape misery, I can be helped through the “tastes” of misery I’m forced to “imbibe” while in mortality. Like I said, “Who can glory too much in the Lord?” I know I can’t say enough, and so as Easter approaches I’m going to glory in Him every day. And today I'm glorying in the fact that my Redeemer loved me enough to save me from 

eternal misery.

The Good News!

As the new year begins, I thought I'd review what is on this blog. I know a lot of people read the blog from a reader and don't actually log into the blog and see what else is there.

On the left of the entries there are two pictures of me--a before and after picture. The long-haired me is the before Grizelda picture and the short haired picture is the after Grizelda picture.  For those of you who don't know, Grizelda is what I named the tumor in my left orbital that necessitated brain surgery on Dec. 19th, 2008. The tumor turned out to be benign, but it was pressing on my optic nerve so that it was difficult to operate on without destroying my vision and if left alone would cause me to go blind. If you click on the before picture it will take you to the entry on the day I found out about Grizelda and then you can read each entry after that to follow the story of the brain surgery and what happened. For those of you with weak stomachs, be careful--there is a picture of the large C shaped scar on my head with all the staples in it. So they wouldn't be frightened by it, I told my grandchildren it was a zipper and it looks exactly like a zipper.


Above the before and after pictures is a menu that you can click on to read more about the principles of Living in Truth.  To learn more about what Living in Truth is, click on the first item "Living in Truth." Below it are four more items, "Pit of Illusion," "Truth Tools," "Unnecessary Pain," and "Vexation." You can click on any of those items and it will bring up all of the entries for those topics.

Below the pictures is a picture of my latest book. If you click on the book it will take you to Amazon.com where you can read more about the book and order it if you would like.

I hope you will enjoy the Good News! site.

The Bad and the Good

I just returned home from the funeral of our niece's husband. While preparing to take his son on a scout outing he was accidentally shot. It is a tragic death and yet the funeral was full of peace, love and joy mostly because of the good life that he has led. All speakers expressed their appreciation for the example he was in serving others--always willing to help out in what ever way he could. He is leaving behind a beautiful legacy for his family.

He will be missed and I have shed tears for his good wife who is left behind to care for three young children. But in times like this I am also so very grateful for the gospel--the Good News--that Jesus Christ has died to save us and to allow us to be eternal families. It is good news in times of tragedy and sorrow. Good News to cling to in times of grieving. The road ahead will be difficult for the young widow, but she is full of faith and knows that God will be with her and so will her husband. She was an amazing example to all of us present.

Today I'm thankful that bad news is always accompanied by The Good News.

The Good News

Today I begin teaching again after the ten-day-break between semesters. I am always excited to start a new semester, but this semester I am teaching the Four Gospels of the New Testament and that adds to the excitement. The Four Gospels are the life of Jesus Christ and to study, review, ponder, and discuss the life of Christ for the next seven weeks is not only a privilege but an absolute delight.

Because it will be on my mind, I’ll probably be recording many New Testament thoughts on Good News! beginning today! But that’s appropriate since the Greek word gospel means good news.

Whenever I introduce the Four Gospels to students I am struck by the power of traditions over the people. We are so blessed to have the Spirit to guide us, but following the Spirit takes work and constant effort and requires us to be obedient and repentant. Traditions, on the other hand, are like the tracks of a train. Once you are on them they carry you without any thought on your part. Thus the ancient Jews took the easy route and became caught up in tradition instead of following the Spirit and after a few years the traditions were all that mattered to them.

There are many things in our lives that we need to evaluate. Are we doing those things because it is habit or because we are being directed to do them? Are we walking through the rituals because they are tradition or are we really thinking and pondering and renewing ourselves through the rituals?

It is easy to slip into the realm of tradition. But it only takes a little thought and effort to bring ourselves back to a state of awareness and alertness—a state that will feed our souls and keep us in tune with the Spirit.

Beginnings

Being at D7’s home has reminded me of how Good News! got started. In September of 2007 D7 called me to tell me she had a surprise for me. She instructed me to get on my computer and type in the address, www.sherriejohnson.blogspot .com. I vaguely knew what a blog was, but I had never seen one before. I followed her instructions and found a blog called Yaddow containing the stories I had been sharing with my family about my growing up years in Centerville, Utah on it. “I thought other people besides our family should read these,” D7 told me and so I continued posting events from my history.

But loving the scriptures and knowing how much they have changed my life and how much they have given me, I began to write more from the scriptures and things I’ve discovered there. At that point I changed the name of the blog. D7 had named the blog Yaddow because that is what I call my office at home. Yaddo  is a 400 acres artist’s retreat in New York. It is a gorgeous heavily wooded area where artists can seek solace and uninterrupted peace to create. I added the “w” to the word and named my office that. My office is not a beautiful wooded area and when I’m in there I seldom have uninterrupted time, but it is my place of solace and the place where I write.

But when I began writing about the scriptures and the gospel of Jesus Christ, the name for the blog evolved because the word gospel means “good news.” For years the idea that the word meant “God’s story” has circulated, but that is a linguistic myth. However, God’s story is certainly “good news!”  and I am delighted to share the Good News and hope it shines sunlight on your day.

But the best part of all this is that every day when I log on I use the password D7 created for the blog. It is an expression of love that only she and I know. It fills me with delight every time I log on and reminds me how blessed I am to be her mother.

Thinking About Good News

There are 239 chapters in the Book of Mormon and of those 239, Christ is mentioned in 233. There are only 6 chapters that do not mention Christ! That is why the Book of Mormon is called Another Testament of Jesus Christ: it testifies of Jesus. But even in the chapters and verses that don’t mention the Savior by name, we find examples and teachings that testify that His ways bring us peace and happiness and disobeying his ways bring us chaos and misery.

It is so simple and yet we forget and we complicate things. All we need to do to live the gospel of Jesus Christ is to do the right thing, right now. Jesus will then heal our past and guide our future. The only moment we need to concern ourselves with is the present moment.

If that isn't good news, I don't know what is!