I took a young man to take the sacrament to those who couldn’t make it. There is one old sister who can’t walk much now our young men take it to every week. She is a few months shy of 90.

I talked to her for a little bit and took some time to admire her pictures. There were her and her husband when they were young. Her children when they were young. I know them now, their hair is white.

There were her parents on their 50th wedding anniversary. She said, “that was very long ago.” And suddenly a feeling took me, of time passing. I said, “birth and death, old and young, generation after generation.” In person I talk like an American, never like that. But the feeling took me and she was touched.

It made me think of a phrase from the church service earlier in the day.

Some people say that you pay attention to folks’ meaning and ignore their words. They are right sometimes. Sometimes you pay attention to their words and ignore their meaning. Sometimes they say more than they know. Sometimes they say more than you know, and there is a deep mystery that suddenly looks out from a commonplace utterance.

And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,

50 Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

51 And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;

This was the phrase I had heard.

Christ through our ancestors
Christ through our children

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