Is God’s love ‘unconditional’? What the scriptures teach about feeling His presence

Disclaimer: The details included in this story and in Mason Wells's book about his injuries and experiences may be graphic to some readers. Read at your own discretion.

How do we react when someone uses the scriptures as a weapon? And how do we overcome the contradictions we find in the scriptures? Read on for powerful insights from LDS scholars Fiona and Terryl Givens.

Thanks to Good 4 Utah for making us aware of this story.

Marion D. Hanks recounts a story of a man who accosted him one day on Temple Square. In answer to Elder Hanks's inquiry of the problem, the man told his story:

The federal government took my father from his parents and sent him to a boarding school where he was physically beaten if he spoke the Pawnee language or practiced his native culture. My sister was sent home from a public school because her skin was the wrong color. I heard a public schoolteacher describe Indians as “savage, bloodthirsty, heathen renegades.” Perhaps most painful, during my early childhood, my family had no expectation of achieving a higher education and becoming doctors, lawyers, or engineers. A college education seemed beyond our reach.

Call me crazy, but I believe we can be at peace with our physical bodies. That we really can feel comfortable in our own skin. I know I’m taking a huge leap by making that statement. After all, body image statistics reveal that most of us aren’t very thrilled with the way we look. It almost seems like hating your body (or at least various parts of it) goes hand in hand with being human.

We didn’t set out to study spiritual gifts when we began our research on the zookeeping profession several years ago. We are management professors interested in how people find meaning in their work. But our study of zookeepers provided some surprising—and inspiring—examples of spiritual gifts in action. The things we learned in our scholarship reverberated with spiritual truth and provided some powerful insights into how we can discover and enact our spiritual gifts.

"Always open the door." That's what Hector Rodriguez says at the end of video detailing his powerful encounter with an LDS missionary. An experience that almost didn't happen to begin with.

Wedding season is here. The weather is warming up and the invitations are increasing. And while this is a great time to excitedly anticipate starting a new family, it's also a crucial time for you to keep building a strong foundation for that family.