Scripture Timers and Poem

I love to read the scriptures and want to encourage my son, nieces and nephews to feel the joy that I feel from reading them everyday.  I bought these three minute timers on Amazon Prime and wrote a poem to go with them so encourage them in their personal studies.  I hope they will enjoy using the timers.

Make TIME for Scripture Study

How many hours are in a day?

We can work, learn, sleep and play.

Make time for scriptures everyday!

You’ll learn from what the prophets say.

Ponderize, pray and be happy and strong,

And learn to choose between right and wrong.

Parables, lessons, lots to learn and know.

You’ll feel the spirit and testimonies will grow.

Remember to treasure all that you read.

Heavenly Father loves his children indeed.

He gave us scriptures because of His love,

So we can return to Heaven above.

Just like we brush our teeth every day

Reading scriptures should be treated that way.

We take care of our bodies and also our souls;

In both areas we set some important goals.

This reading timer shows you three little minutes,

So you’ll know when to start and when to end it.

Flip it again if you’d like to double your time,

And flip it once more to read for nine.

Whether you choose to read for nine, six or three,

You’ll be blessed for your efforts and very happy.

The 5 Love Languages

Feeling loved is a primary emotional need for all humans.  There are countless poems, letters, stories, books, and songs written about love.

Here's one song that kept running through my mind as I contemplated writing this post -
Everybody.  The chorus repeats, "Everybody, everybody wants to love, everybody, everybody wants to be loved."  So, so true.

In Dr. Gary Chapman's book, "The 5 Love Languages," it says, "Child psychologists affirm that every child has certain basic emotional needs that must be met if he is to be emotionally stable. Among those emotional needs, none is more basic that the need for love and affection, the need to sense that he or she belongs and is wanted.  With an adequate supply of affection, the child will likely develop into a responsible adult.  Without that love, he or she will be emotionally and socially challenged." (You can listen to this book on YouTube).

Dr. Chapman shares a wonderful metaphor to illustrate the importance of feeling loved.  He heard this metaphor from Dr. Ross Campbell who is a psychiatrist who specialized in the treatment of children and adolescents.

The 5 Love Languages - Ideas for Couples

Click HERE to read my original post about The 5 Love Languages.

5 LOVE LANGUAGES FOR COUPLES

Need some ideas on how to speak your spouse's love language?  Here are some from Dr. Chapman's book:

The 5 Love Languages of Children

Click HERE to read my original post about The 5 Love Languages.

The 5 Love Languages aren't just for couples - They apply to everyone you interact with.  As a mom of three boys, I found this information very helpful in my parenting since I spend so much of my life focusing on my children (and my spouse).  We all know that each child is unique and that they each need different things from us.  After learning about the Love Languages, I feel that my parenting skills have improved.  (Too bad I didn't read it 19 years ago!)

Here are descriptions of The 5 Love Languages in regards to children:

Law of Consecration - Primary Lesson

I am a big believer in the Law of Consecration.  My friends and family know that I believe that everything we have been given is from God - our time, talents and material blessings.  Since everything belongs to God and comes from Him, it is our obligation to handle those blessings according to His will.  We are all on earth here together to help each other and share.  (The hard part comes when some people take advantage of others but I figure that is their problem, not mine).

Here's a Primary lesson that teaches on this subject.  The Lord Reveals the Law of Consecration.

I made this worksheet to go along with the lesson.

Quotes - Time

Don't major in minor things.

Sometimes we can find ourselves busy doing important things instead of essential things.

It’s impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one’s hat keeps blowing off.” - Woody Allen

If Satan can’t make you bad, he’ll make you busy.

Time Quote by Alexander Pope
For he lives twice who can at once employ, The present well, and e’en the past enjoy.

Time Quote by Benjamin Franklin
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Ayn Rand:
I'm working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life.

Sir John Lubbock:
In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.

Earl of Chesterfield:
It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.

George Eliot:
It is never too late to become what you might have been.

Greg Hickman:
It is time to break through the barriers that have held you back and held you down for such a long time. It is time to reach out and indelibly etch your place in history.

John Leonard:
It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
It takes less time to do things right that to explain why you did it wrong.

Henry David Thoreau:
It's not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?

Mary O'Connor:
It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted.

Lisa Alther:
Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you.

George S. Patton:
A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow.

William James:
Act as if what you do makes a difference.

Ancient Proverb:
Good habits result from resisting temptation.

T. S. Elliot:
Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.

Robert Updegraff:
To get all there is out of living, we must employ our time wisely, never being in too much of a hurry to stop and sip life, but never losing our sense of the enormous value of a minute.

Unknown Author:
Today, be aware of how you are spending your 1,440 beautiful moments, and spend them wisely.

M. Scott Peck:
Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.

Goethe:
We always have time enough if we will but use it aright.

Unknown Author:
We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.

John Randolph:
Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our possessions.

Alan Lakein:
Time is equal to life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.

Lord Chesterfield:
Take care in your minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves.

Michael Althsuler:
The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.

Steven Covey:
The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.

Richard H. Nelson:
Never let yesterday use up today.

Unknown Author:
Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.

Art Buchwald:
Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.

Henry David Thoreau:
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

Bonnie Prudden:
You can't turn back the clock. But you can wind it up again

Charles Bixton:
You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.

Brian Tracy:
Your greatest resource is your time.

Doc Childre and Howard Martin:
You're writing the story of your life one moment at a time.

H. Jackson Brown:
Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.

Benjamin Franklin:
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Thomas Edison:
Everything comes to him that hustles while he waits.

Talk - Unclutter Your Life

William R. Bradford, “I Want My Life Back,” New Era, Sep 1993, 49

From an address delivered in April 1992 general conference.

Do you own things, or do they own you? Who—or what—is pushing your control buttons?

My wife and I recently received a letter from one of our daughters that, in part, read, “I’ve become a nurse. Four of the six kids have the flu. I’m changing my ambitions from psychiatrist to nurse. Anyway, nobody in this family is sick in the head; we are just all sick.” Then in capital letters she wrote, “I WANT MY LIFE BACK!”

When we read the letter, we gave each other a knowing smile. But those last words, “I WANT MY LIFE BACK,” have stuck in my mind. My daughter’s situation was temporary and for a good cause, but I’ve been hearing more often about people who are filling their lives with meaningless and harmful things.

A cluttered life is a life that you do not have control of. It is a life in which the things you have surrounded yourself with, and allow to use up your time, are controlling you and negatively influencing your happiness and eternal progress.

Our lives can become cluttered by many things. Some are obvious, such as material things. We can surround ourselves with the material things to the extent that we have no time for the spiritual. Look around and you will see all the gadgets and toys and the nice and the fun things that cause us to squander and pay and to wander and play.

Other things that clutter our lives and use our time are not as obvious. They are more subtle and just seem to evolve, taking control of us.

Whenever I think of something subtle—something kind of hidden that we know is there if we stop to think about it but don’t suspect it of cluttering or negatively influencing our lives—I know Satan is busy at his work.

Nothing suits the devil better than to become a silent partner with us. He knows that we have agency and are at liberty to make choices for ourselves. He also knows that while in mortality we are subject to time. If by his subtle means he can become our silent partner, he can influence us to make wrong choices that use our time unwisely and prevent us from doing what we should.

I have learned that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to unclutter one’s life by starting at the top of the pile with the idea that the solution is to just get things sorted and better organized. It is nice to get better organized, but that is not enough. We must actually get rid of what we do not need.

To do this we need to develop a list of basics, a list of those things that are indispensable to our mortal welfare and happiness and our eternal salvation. This list must follow the gospel pattern and contain elements needed for our sanctification and perfection. It must be the product of inspiration and prayerful judgment. It should separate need from greed. It must be our best understanding of those things that are important as opposed to those things that are just interesting, between things we really need and things we just want.

We need to examine all the ways we use our time so we can better understand what we should really be spending our time doing. After all, we give our lives to that to which we give our time.
We must learn that none of the exciting and entertaining and fun things are worth it if they take us from the path that will lead us back home to our Heavenly Father.

We must remember that a person who is not living the basics of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not living them, no matter who or what has caused it. We must also remember that a family divided is a family divided, no matter who or what divides it.

We need to ask ourselves some serious and soul-searching questions. One of these would surely be, Do I have time for prayer? I don’t mean just an occasional, quick, repetitious prayer that is like giving a wave of the hand to your Father in Heaven as you pass Him on your way to something “important.” I mean sincere, honest, “from the depths of a contrite spirit and a broken heart” prayer; kneeling in humility, demonstrating to the Holy Father that you really love him; private prayer which involves you in the process of repentance and pleading for forgiveness and allows time for pondering and waiting for the answers to come.

The next question might be, Do I study the scriptures? If you do, you know that Lehi saw a rod of iron, which, interpreted, means the word of God (1 Ne. 11:1–23). Those who held to the rod, using it as a guide at all times, came safely through the mist of darkness and arrived at the tree of life and partook of its glorious fruit (1 Ne. 8:19, 30). I solemnly testify that the holy scriptures are the word of God. Constant study of them is the act of holding to the iron rod. They will guide you to the Tree of Life. If you are one who has said, “I want my life back,” I exhort you to go to the Tree of Life, where you will find the pure love of God.

God’s plan is a plan of simplicity. It involves being obedient to simple laws, laws that have within them an automatic blessing and happiness for obedience and an automatic punishment and unhappiness for their disobedience.

I urge you to clear away the clutter. Take your life back. Use your willpower. Learn to say no to those things that will rob you of your precious time and infringe upon your agency to choose to live in exactness to God’s plan of happiness and exaltation. Don’t let the subtle influences of Satan take away any part of your life. Keep it under your own control and operated by your own agency.

It is my humble prayer that by our choices we may preserve our individual agency from the subtleness of Satan and live our lives bright and clear and on the path that leads us back to the presence of our Heavenly Father.

Quote - Not Fretting Over Unimportant Things

If circumstances require us to choose between two good things, even perfectly wholesome, innocent, and worthwhile desires may need to be deferred rather than the truly critical things: relationships, service, and obedience to the Lord. No matter how much we desire to perfect our lives, this simply may not be the time for an immaculate house, a total self-reliance plan, a large garden, or extensive family history.

Unless we can involve our children in such projects in positive, loving, security-building ways, we may be able to use our time more effectively elsewhere—maybe even get a little more sleep and reduce stress all around or take a walk in the rain or read an extra chapter of a bedtime story or the scriptures together.

I have always really wanted a clean, beautiful house, but my children do not worry about such matters. One day I was fussing because they hadn’t put the sheet music away in the piano bench. My son David asked, “What does it matter, Mom? Do you want people who come to visit to think we never use the piano?”

David helped me realize that I had succumbed to an illusion: that the purpose of the family was to support the housework, rather than vice versa. We need to remember that the purpose of our children is not to help keep our homes in order; rather, the purpose of our homes is to help us rear righteous children. The purpose of the task (and of the home and of everything in it) is to build eternal relationships. People are more important than things (see Morm. 8:39).