The word reason means to use the mind to think, understand, and form judgements. The Lord asks us to do that together with him. Sometimes we may need help from others to with this process. A priesthood leader or teacher is there to help. Sometimes we need help to reason it out from a therapist, or a professional. Sometimes there may even be medical attention needed to help us cleanse ourselves and our behavior of some sins. No matter the process needed for each person, it is comforting to me that we will be working with the Lord.

Isaiah gives us what it takes to wash ourselves clean. He tells us it is more than just not doing a bad thing, like life was made up of checklists or things to do and not do.

When we were young, we all "understood as a child," but as we grew and gain perspective our knowledge and wisdom grew and we "put off childish things." We learned to see the world, and people, and the even the gospel in more complex ways.

While John the Baptist was preaching, calling his followers to repentance and baptizing those that followed, there came a question from the crowd in Luke 3 asking, “what shall we do then?”

We are here to help each other. Sometimes we can’t do it ourselves.

Darkness cannot exist in the presence of light. Add light and darkness ceases to be. The more light, the more darkness is removed. The opposite of darkness is light.

In the same way the opposite of fear is faith.

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus tells his followers (and all of us) that they (we) are the salt of the earth. Looking at all the things that salt does and the essential nature of this, Jesus was telling us something rather important.

People are complicated, wonderful, mean, beautiful, ugly, loving, angry, and sweet things all at different times. We all have backgrounds that no other human could ever fully understand. We all experience life in so many different ways, one story, or one victory, or one mistake I made could not come close to explaining who I am. We need to remember that when we look at others.

It is easy to think of practice as something we do for only certain skills in life. We practice playing musical instruments, we practice athletic team sports, we practice when we learn how to play a new game. Practice should be much more than that, we just don't usually use that word in other areas of life. Working to change or improve is practice, or it should be.

The Lord has asked us to act differently and forgive. He has asked us not to fight back. The Lord is telling us to leave the justice and the anger and the blame to him. We should forgive, always.

The crooked paths we all have or may strayed on will be made straight as we repent and find our way back.  The rough parts of our personalities or the rough parts we cause though sinning will be made smooth.

Whether it is media, food, people we spend time with, or any activity, we need to watch the type of things we consumed, how much we consumed, and for what reason we consumed it. Is it real and filling our soul, or is it temporary and “like a dream” that has no good effect on us.

We sometimes look at getting our voice heard as a way to combat the others around us who we see as being wrong, or full of wrath themselves, when we should be looking for a way to not stir up wrath inside our own minds. “Turneth away wrath,” is just as much an internal struggle as it is a struggle with those around us.

What Christ presented in the sermon on the mount is that we must do much more than just follow that law. He gave us a much higher law. A law that is written on our hearts.

In our modern culture most of the wheat or grains we interact with are in sliced bread we bought in a plastic bag from the grocery store or more recently had delivered directly to our house. Our interactions with wheat are in the form of toast or a sandwich. We no longer have much context in how the harvesting or threshing works. The people in Christ’s time did, so those listening to John the Baptist speak here would have all understood.

The bible or scriptures Jesus was referring in John 5 were what we would now call the Old Testament, or at least something close to it. When Jesus was speaking, Paul had not yet been converted. Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew were still learning, they had not written any of this down yet. None of the letters, or epistles, we now study in our New Testament had been written. As a matter of fact, the churches the letters were written too did not even exist yet.

The man Jesus healed on that sabbath day in the book of John had been there at this pool for 38 years. Waiting and trying for 38 years. He must have become very bitter, tired, and angry at the world and at God in the process.

They are the future leaders, bishops, stake presidents, and teachers of the church. The are the future teachers, managers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and leaders in all aspects of our world. There is so much to distract them, and the time goes by so fast.

He called them to be “fishers of men.” I do not know, and it is not recorded, but I’m sure the conversation was at least a little more than just 3 words.

Good things happen to evil people. Tragedies and small troubles happen to the best of people.