prayer is a form of work

How is prayer work? What does that look like? “I believe it may look like this: staying on our knees until our casual prayer turns into ‘mighty prayer.’ If I’m honest, this transformation happens when I’m about to finish and say ‘amen.’ But then I pause, and I think of the things that I don’t want to say. I think of the heavy things I’m carrying and the fear I don’t even want to admit to myself.”

As her heart softens and “breaks wide open,” said Sister Runia, “I talk with my Heavenly Father, who listens as if I’m the only one. When I pray with my whole heart, that becomes ‘mighty prayer.’”

Her prayers are now more of a real conversation, which includes listening and responding, Sister Runia said. “As I get up off my knees and begin my day, revelation continues to happen on the move, as I keep a prayer in my freshly broken, soft heart.”

When heaven feels silent, ‘keep praying,’ Sister Runia tells BYU–Pathway students: Sister Tamara W. Runia of the Young Women general presidency shares 3 truths she’s learned about prayer. Church News. April 7, 2026. 

the prepared mind

Dans les champs de l’observation, le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.

In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared minds.

Louis Pasteur

Pasteur, L. (1854). Discours de réception à la Faculté des Sciences de Lille. Lille, France. (English translations vary). As found in Dinets, V. (2013). Dragon Songs: Love and adventure among crocodiles, alligators, and other dinosaur relations. Arcade Publishing. p.43

thank the Lord for letting you have the ride

There’s a saying that goes, “Expectations are premeditated resentments.”

“Wait, what?” you might think. “Aren’t expectations a good thing?”

President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) once quoted columnist Jenkins Lloyd Jones, who said:

“Anyone who imagines that bliss … is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed.

“[The fact is] … most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. …

“Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.

“The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”

Holly Hudson

"Managing Unrealistic Expectations," YA Weekly April 2021. See also Gordon B. Hinckley, “A Conversation with Single Adults,” Ensign, Mar. 1997, 60.

six days shall ye work

Regarding mankind, no theme is more salient in the Bible than the morality of personal responsibility, for it is through this that man cultivates the inner development leading to his own growth, good citizenship and happiness. The entitlement/welfare state is a paradigm that undermines that noble goal. 

The Bible's proclamation that "Six days shall ye work" is its recognition that on a day-to-day basis work is the engine that brings about man's inner state of personal responsibility. Work develops the qualities of accountability and urgency, including the need for comity with others as a means for the accomplishment of tasks. With work, he becomes imbued with the knowledge that he is to be productive and that his well-being is not an entitlement. And work keeps him away from the idleness that Proverbs warns leads inevitably to actions and attitudes injurious to himself and those around him. 

ARYEH SPERO, "What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism," Wall Street Journal. JANUARY 30, 2012, 11:38 A.M. ET.

accommodating to parents

I would hope that Latter-day Saints would be at the forefront in creating an environment in the workplace that is more receptive and accommodating to both women and men in their responsibilities as parents. 

Quentin L. Cook, "LDS Women Are Incredible!" April 2011 General Conference

work outside the home

We should all be careful not to be judgmental or assume that sisters are less valiant if the decision is made to work outside the home. We rarely understand or fully appreciate people’s circumstances. Husbands and wives should prayerfully counsel together, understanding they are accountable to God for their decisions. 

Quentin L. Cook, "LDS Women Are Incredible!" April 2011 General Conference

everybody was a worker

In an essay on African socialism that he wrote in 1962, Nyerere gave an idyllic account of pre-colonial society. ‘Everybody was a worker… Not only was the capitalist, or the landed exploiter unknown… [but] capitalist exploitation was impossible. Loitering was an unthinkable disgrace.’ The advent of colonialism had changed all this. ‘In the old days the African had never aspired to the possession of personal wealth for the purpose of dominating any of his fellows. He had never had labourers or “factory hands” to do his work for him. But then came the foreign capitalists. They were wealthy. They were powerful. And the African naturally started wanting to be wealthy too.’ There was nothing inherently wrong with that, said Nyerere, but it lead to exploitation. There was now a need for Africans to ‘re-educate’ themselves, to regain their former attitude of mind, their sense of community. 

The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 2005.

were to stand him now in good stead

Tamanu (Calophyllum

inophyllum) is a large evergreen,

widely cultivated in all tropical

regions of the world, including

several Pacific Islands. Its wood

is hard and strong and has been

used in construction or

boatbuilding.

While his breakfast roasted in the coals, the boy cleared the brush away from the base of the great tamanu. There was no wood better for canoe building than this. It was tough, durable, yet buoyant in the water. Mafatu could fell his tree by fire and burn it out, too. Later he would grind an adze out of basalt for the finished work. The adze would take a long time, but he had made them often in Hikueru and he knew just how to go about it. The boy was beginning to realize that the hours he had spent fashioning utensils were to stand him now in good stead. Nets and knives and sharkline, implements and shell fishhooks – he knew how to make them all. How he had hated those tasks in Hikueru! He was quick and clever with his hands, and now he was grateful for the skill which was his.



An adze is a tool used for smoothing

or carving rough-cut wood in hand

woodworking. Adzes are most often

used for squaring up logs, or for

hollowing out timber.



Armstrong Sperry, Call It Courage, Simon and Schuster, 1940. Chapter 4

they left us the legacy of a good name

The importance of having a good name is spoken of in Proverbs, where we read: “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold” and “The [name] of the just is blessed.”

As I pondered these scriptures and the importance of having a good name, a flood of memories came into my mind about the good name and legacy my parents left my four brothers, my two sisters, and me. My parents did not have the riches of the world, nor did they have silver or gold. Nine of us lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath home with an enclosed back porch, where my sisters slept. When my parents passed away, my brothers and sisters and I gathered to divide their earthly possessions, which were few in number. My mother left a few dresses, some used furniture, and a few other personal items. My father left some carpenter tools, some old hunting rifles, and little else. The only things of any monetary value were a modest home and a small savings account.

Together we wept openly, giving thanks, knowing they had left us something much more precious than silver or gold. They had given us their love and their time. They had often borne testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel, which we can now read in their precious journals. Not so much by words but more by their example, they had taught us to work hard, to be honest, and to pay a full tithing. They also engendered a desire to further our education, to serve a mission, and most important, to find an eternal companion, be married in the temple, and endure to the end. Truly they left us the legacy of a good name, for which we shall ever be grateful.



Mervyn B. Arnold, "What Have You Done with My Name?" General Conference October 2010

the disposability of just about everything

At home, Nademah arranged the tablecloth and placemats. Safiya and Aisha set out the silverware and glasses. Kathy threw together a salad and poured milk for the kids and juice for herself and Zeitoun.


Zeitoun arrived with the chicken, showered, and joined the family for dinner.

“Finish, finish,” he said to his daughters, who were picking at their food, leaving huge swaths of it uneaten.

He had gotten used to it after all these years, but still, there were times when the waste got to him. The disposability of just about everything. Growing up in Syria he had often heard the expression “If your hand doesn’t work for it, your heart doesn’t feel sorry for it.” But in the U.S., it wasn’t just the prosperity – because New Orleans was not uniformly prosperous, to be sure – there was a sense that everything could be replaced, and on a whim. In his children he was trying to instill a sense of the value of work, the value of whatever came into their house, but he knew that much would be lost in the context, the waste and excess of the culture at large. He had been brought up to know that what God hates as much as anything is waste. It was, he had been told, one of the three things God most hated: murder, divorce, and waste. It destroyed a society.



Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. Random House, Inc. 2010.

that feeling of getting this place

Fayetteville, West Virginia (1974)

You know what I really love about doing this? In a sense I preserve this little place - I caught it, and it won't disappear. It's been held. There's something about this particular moment, this particular unique little corner - and it's not going to go.... I love that feeling; I love that feeling of getting this place. You know, when you talk about everything disappearing and time going by and... it's sort of a nice feeling to think that even if that tin place burns down like that building in front of the town up there... maybe, maybe these pictures will be preserved just the way we have all of those pictures from other times that somebody else took the trouble to do. And to me, to be part of that tradition is very, very important.


David Plowden as quoted in Brave companions: portraits in history by David McCullough. Simon and Schuster, 1992. p. 187

great supplicators... great seers

Without prayer life is not a success. Prayer is just as necessary as work. Working without prayer is a form of atheism which takes no cognizance of God.

“Those who go farthest on in the school of prayer and learn most of its hidden secrets often develop a sort of prescience which comes nearest to the prophetic spirit, the Holy Spirit showing them ‘things to come.’ They seem, like Savonarola, to know something of the purpose of God, to anticipate His plans, and to forecast the history of their own times. The great supplicators have been also the great seers” (Arthur T. Pierson).


Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.96

we start all of our meetings... with prayer

We start all of our meetings, including shareholders meetings and directors meetings, with prayer. If you start meetings with prayer, the meetings are more fruitful and productive – you reach decisions that are more likely to help everybody concerned. There is less controversy when you begin with prayer. Or, as I like to say, “Prayer helps you to think more clearly” … Everything you do following such a prayer is likely to be more successful. Your mind is not twisted by conflicts. You’re less likely to disagree with your associates or do something you’ll regret next year. So your decision-making may be improved if you try to bring yourself into contact with the Creator, into harmony with His purposes.


Sir John Templeton, Sir John Templeton: From Wall Street to Humility Theology by Robert L. Herrmann (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 1998) p.142 as quoted in One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America by James P. Moore, Jr. Doubleday, 2005. p.427

the idle generation

The idle generation! Hours each day and nothing to do… We want you parents to create work for your children… "What can we do?" they ask. Do the shopping, work in the hospital, help the neighbors and the church custodian, wash dishes, vacuum the floors, make the beds, get the meals, learn to sew. Read good books, … clean the house, press your clothes, rake the leaves, shovel the snow, peddle paper. Lawmakers in their overeagerness to protect the child have legislated until the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. But no law prohibits most work…


Spencer W. Kimball, Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p.360-1. See also D&C 42:42

teach them to work

Let us teach them to work and to realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to work is a blessing, that love to work is success.


David O. McKay, Pure Religion: The Story of Church Welfare Since 1930 by Glen L. Rudd. 1995. P.245. Originally found in True to the Faith, comp. Llewelyn R. McKay p.287

this is not true success

The great criterion of success in the world is that men can make money. But I want to say to you Latter-day Saints that to do this is not true success. As a man grows and increases in the things of this world, if he is not careful, he will lose the Spirit of the Lord, and he will set his heart upon the things of this world. And if he loses the Spirit of the Lord, and fails to be honest with God in the payment of his tithes as strictly and honestly as he would account to a partner if he were engaged in business, that man will lessen his strength, will lessen his power, will lessen the testimony of the Spirit of God within his soul. There is no question of it in my mind. We must be honest with the Lord. The great trouble is that there are many people who, as they grow and increase in the things of this world, set their hearts upon them and lose the Spirit of the Lord. Therefore, that which is counted by the world as success is failure; because if a man starts out for a prize and he fails to secure it after laboring nearly a lifetime for that prize, certainly his life has been a failure. I know many individuals who, when they made small sums of money, were absolutely honest with the Lord, and paid one-tenth of it. But when they made large sums of money they paid all the way from one percent, instead of ten, up to two or three percent. What is the matter? Why, the appetite for money grows upon a man, increases and strengthens unless he is careful, just as much as the appetite for whiskey. It gets possession of him, and he loves the money instead of loving it only for the good that he can do with it. He does not estimate properly the value of things. I once wrote a little sentiment for The Improvement Era, which was published fourteen years ago [in 1897], as follows:

"Not he who merely succeeds in making a fortune, and in so doing blunts the natural affections of the heart, and chases therefrom the love of his fellows, can be said to be truly successful: but he who so lives that those who know him best shall love him most; and that God, who knows not only his deeds, but also the inmost sentiments of his heart, shall love him; of such an one, only--notwithstanding he may die in poverty--can it be said indeed and of a truth, 'he should be crowned with the wealth of success.'" I assert with confidence that the law of success, here and hereafter, is to have a humble and a prayerful heart, and to work, work, WORK.


Heber J. Grant. Gospel Standards, p.181. (see 2 Nephi 9:30)

the same feverish yet causal air

Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die. In our little town (is this, one wonders, an effect of the climate?) all three are done on much the same lines, with the same feverish yet causal air. The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, "doing business." Naturally they don't eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, sea-bathing, going to the pictures. But, very sensibly, they reserve these pastimes for Saturday afternoons and Sundays and employ the rest of the week in making money, as much as possible. In the evening, on leaving the office, they forgather, at an hour that never varies, in the cafés, stroll the same boulevard, or take the air on their balconies. The passions of the young are violent and short-lived; the vices of older men seldom range beyond an addiction to bowling, to banquets and "socials," or clubs where large sums change hands on the fall of a card.


Albert Camus, The Plague, Vintage Books. 1948. p.4

The three of us, Jake, Joe, and I, became... an entity. There were many entities in our close-knit organizations. Groups of threes and fours, usually from the same squads or sections, core elements within the families that wee the small units, were readily recognized as entities.... This sharing... evolved never to be relinquished, never to be repeated. Often three such entities would make up a squad, with incredible results in combat. They would literally insist on going hungry for one an other, freezing for one another, dying for one another. And the squad would try to protect them or bail them out without the slightest regard to consequences, cussing them all the way for making it necessary. Such a rifle squad, machine gun section, scout-observer section, pathfinder section was a mystical concoction.


Kurt Gabel. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne - From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, p.21, 22

At the working man's house hunger looks in, but dares not enter.


Benjamin Franklin - (1706-90), U.S. statesman, scientist, inventor and writer. Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin, edited by Russel B. Nye. 1949. p.170

that's the only thing I'd really like to be

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.


J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. 1945. p.173