"How can chess be bad? It's got four bishops in it!"

So we continued talking about the Sermon on the Mount this week.
First, did you know that near where Christ was giving this sermon, there was a Roman city on a hill that they'd see every night? So when Christ says that "a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid," He's actually referencing something they'd be familiar with.

Then on Thursday, we started talking about miracles, and how miracles don't end with the physical part. You can get a physical miracle, and you can get a spiritual miracle. While the physical miracles often don't last, spiritual miracles do, and they mean a lot more. I really enjoyed talking about the leper in Matthew 8, and one thing Brother Griffin mentioned is how leprosy is often a symbol for baggage that we carry. This leper, when he says, "if thou wilt" is showing that he has faith not to be healed. And that was a difficult lesson for me to learn. In the year that shall not be mentioned, I often prayed that things would get better, and kept getting the answer that I just had to endure. And I wasn't really happy about that. It was miserable. But now I'm grateful I had to wait so I could learn to have faith in the Lord's timing. Just like Jairus, who was delayed on the way to receive his miracle and had his daughter die while he was waiting, for a while, it felt like the time for my miracle had passed, and it hadn't. Things got better, but even more, I learned a lot from the experience. Not that I'd want to go through that again, but it shaped me a lot. And I'm grateful for that.