The Thoughts in My Head Go Round and Round

Round and round,
Round and round....
It doesn't take much to get me singing, and that sounds like a fine song title to me. :) It's true though, a lot's been going on around here, mostly in the windmills of my mind.
First up, Primary. I'm still loving it. I love the children, love the leaders and Marie, my co-teacher, and I love looking for ways to keep the children engaged with the lessons. I'm not so hot with visual aids, and since Brianna's been gone there's been a real dearth of them in our class. But on Saturday, Julie sent me a link for an Old Testament era man, and Dan and Colin printed, colored, and glued them onto craft sticks so that we could have Joseph and his 11 brothers there with us on Sunday. The brothers had to do a repentance dance after they sold Joseph to the merchant men and lied to their Father concerning his whereabouts. I resisted the urge to use music from the Dreamcoat, and found a more appropriate Janice Kapp Perry song instead. When in doubt leave it out, I always say. But we're talking about getting together to watch the Dreamcoat DVD, Marie, Ally, Madison, Marinda, Nate, Doug, Andrew, Makhyla, and I. The BSU LDS Institute is putting on The Ark in a few weeks, so perhaps we'll encourage our class to go to that too. I saw it years ago in UT, with Kimball and Jessica (and Michael McLean), and it was wonderful! I'm looking forward to seeing it again, this time with Dan, who is not looking forward to seeing it in the slightest. ;) A good friend with a great voice, Evan Darrington, who graduated with Shane, is in it, and I love to hear him sing.
Second, most everyone's heard of the law of the harvest, right? But what about the law of recompense? I just learned of it today during my scripture time. I was studying Mosiah 19 with the help of http://www.gospeldoctrine.comm/, when I came across this:
( The greatest difference between the death of Abinadi and the death of Noah can be found in the following scripture, those that die in me shall not taste of death, for it shall be sweet unto them; and they that die not in me, wo unto them, for their death is bitter (DC 42:46-7). Thus, the justice of God renders Noah his due reward. “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him (Proverbs 26:27). God has promised to ‘recompense unto every man according to his work, and measure to every man according to the measure which he has measured to his fellow man’ (D&C 1:10). ‘I will visit upon you the evil of your doings’ (Jeremiah 23:2), he promised; ‘and will recompense upon thee all thine abominations' (Ezekiel 7:3). ‘It is a righteous thing with God,' Paul wrote, ‘to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you’ (2 Thessalonians1:6). Kings and kingdoms, the great and the small, all are subject to the law of recompense by a just God who either in this life or the world to come balances all accounts (see Jeremiah 25:14; Jeremiah 50:29; Ezekiel 7:9).” (McConkie and Millet, Doctrinal Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 2, p. 268)

I'm 58 years old, and I keep learning new things all the time! I looked up other scriptures on the term "recompense", and I've about decided that the law of the harvest and the law of recompense are the same law. When Shane and I opined about it in today's missionary emails, he wrote that it was a "comfortingly threatening" law. Good description, Shanestar!

Third, books, books, and more books. I just finished Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy. I enjoyed it, but probably won't recommend it to either of the book clubs. I like cooking, and I come from Irish stock, so it was fun to read about Irish caterers. the ending was great, the plot was a hearty stew of likeable folks, but overall, it was just ok for me. Another book I thought I'd loathe was More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon. It's a ghost story, of all things. I don't like ghosts or vampires, no matter how popular they become, so it was a surprise to end up really enjoying this book, a cautionary tale if I've ever met one. One passage struck me especially, the one where a young, headstrong girl, Claris, announces her engagement, and refuses to let her parents discuss any of their concerns with her. Usually, in fiction and in our imagination, true love wins the day. But not in this case. Not in this case at all! Next up on my reading list is The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. And no, it's not a new career field I'm considering. If I find anything objectionable in it, I won't even bother to finish it. But Shane did say that it sounds like a good choice, what with my stash of guns and past shooting classes. :)