The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Yeah, THIS is what I am teaching in Seminary tomorrow. And THIS is the picture from the seminary manual that I'm supposed to show teenagers.  I'm sorry, but this just scares me. 

Revelations 6 is the chapter I'm supposed to teach, and I'm supposed to focus on the first six of the seven seals from the sealed book.  MORE than a little confusing and hard to understand, this Book of Revelation stuff is.  So, I wrote a little song to help break it down.  It's to the tune of The Beverly Hillbilly's, which isn't irreverent.  At all.     

John saw a vision of a book with seven seals

When the seals were open symbols inside he reveals

What those symbols represent are pertinent to know

So come along and into Revelation we go

The first seal that was opened, John saw a horse of white

The rider had a bow and he was ready for a fight

On his head he wore a crown, a conquering he would go

Enoch was victorious over evil we know

Inside the second seal was horse of deepest red

There also was a sword that meant destruction and bloodshed

This describes Noah's day when evil filled the earth

The Lord sent a flood and gave this world a rebirth

A horse of blackest black was seen inside the third seal

A rider rode with balances, a penny for a meal

Was more than people could afford, starvation filled the land

The age of Abraham and famine now was at hand

The wars and torments, treacheries inside seal number four

Were represented by a pale horse, death was at the door

Hell followed after him, and war overran

Nations fought, kingdoms fell again and again

In five John saw an alter representing sacrifice

Martyrs killed for their beliefs, many lost their lives

Persecuting Christians was the sport of the day

The priesthood lost, the church was gone 'twas bad all the way

Seal number six showed catastrophic events

The earth did quake, the heaven showed great things of consequence

The great day of His wrath had come, who was left to stand?

The righteous living in our day on this promised land

The book was sealed up seven times and six have been unsealed

One more seal has yet to show events that were revealed

When Christ will come again and peace will reign upon the land

Righteousness will conquer and will have the last stand.

The Journey of A Thousand Miles . . .

 Brennan graduated from Utah State on Saturday.  Summa Cum Laude.  Bren is my fourth child to graduate from college.  And this Mom is proud of every last one of those college graduates.

 But for some reason, maybe because he doesn't have a wife to share these things with, and he's pretty quiet around his friends, I was lucky enough to share many blood, sweat and tears moments of Bren's college days.  Days when he thought he had failed a test, and then found out the next day he had the highest score and would set the curve, sleepless nights when he was up trying to finish a paper or project or just studying for an exam.  Moments when he needed the encouragement that he really COULD ask a professor to write him a letter of recommendation.  And many, many papers I proofread for him.  Papers I could not make heads nor tails of, but could at least decide if he was using proper English and punctuating correctly.  In those ways and many others, I got to play a small part in Brennan's college life  So it was a fulfilling experience to see it all work out in the end.

 Here Brennan is getting some last words of advice from one of his professors.  I know, looks like a punk kid off the streets, but he is a professor of some engineering classes.  And Brennan TA's for him.

Mr Unsocial here had a hard time focusing on getting pictures take.  He was too busy saying hi to all his graduate friends.

                                                        And being the class clown . . . .

                                                           So we threw Emma into the mix. 

 Then we went to the lab and tried to watch his senior project in action.  It didn't work, apparently because Brennan hooked something up wrong and blew another something up.  "If we only had ONE MORE WEEK, we could have worked the bugs out,"  he said.

                                                           These two are such a pair! 

                      Receiving his diploma in action - as it happened.  Live from the College of Engineering.

This picture has a story.  It is a long story, but one that makes me smile in retrospect.  This is the procession leading to the main graduation that happened Saturday morning.  Brennan didn't really want to participate in this graduation, but I wanted to see him walk so I could take pictures of him in the processional, so I played the "Mom Card"  and made him go.  We were waiting along the processional path - a glorified name for the sidewalk where the graduates walked, for 15 or 20 minutes in the wind and freezing cold before they finally showed up.  I was talking to a lady standing next to me about her daughter who was graduating in Education.  I offered to step back and get out of her way when her daughter's group came by so she could take pictures, and that started a conversation that lasted until we saw the caps and gowns streaming down the path.  The graduates were walking by college, each group wearing a different colored tassel,  and Bren's, as you can see, was orange, so when we started seeing orange tassels I got ready.  I told Emma, who was waiting with me, to let me know when she saw him.  Almost immediately Emma said, "There he is!"  I looked over the crowd of graduates practically RUNNING past me!  ( I think they should make them slow down for the sake of us picture taking Moms!)  I couldn't see him.  "Where?"  I asked Emma.  "He's right there!"  She pointed right in front of us.  "Where?"  I was frantically scanning the crowd, but I just couldn't see him.  Then, the lady I had JUST met 15 minutes before, and who had NEVER met Brennan, said, "HE'S RIGHT THERE!!"  She didn't even KNOW him and SHE could see him.  I still couldn't.  So I just started taking pictures of the crowds of graduates hoping he was in there somewhere.  Suddenly I heard a voice.  In the midst of the confusion and the noise of hundreds of people, I heard a very familiar voice cry, "MOM!"  and I turned, and there he was.  My Brennan with his cute little smile.  And I had time to snap one single picture.  Luckily, it worked. 

I told this story in testimony meeting today and talked about how sometimes, because of the glitter and confusion of the world we can't see what is right in front of us, sometimes even if we are looking for it.  But if we have spent time reading the scriptures, listening to the prophets and apostles and feeling the spirit in our lives, we will recognize that familiar voice when it calls out to us.  And we will turn towards it and find what we are looking for.  I thought that was a pretty good analogy.

But then a man who was visiting our ward from Levan, got up and told how impressed he was with my story and how it made him think about the importance of mothers in the world.  How, when he came home from school, he would walk in the door and yell, "mom!" and she would answer, "What!"  and he would say, "oh, nothing", he just wanted to know she was there.  He talked about how,  when Brennan called out, "Mom!"  I was probably the only mother out of hundreds of mothers there to hear and recognize his voice and turn.  It was probably a sound that was lost to everyone else, but I heard it, recognized it, and turned towards it. It was evidence to him how important mothers are.  And there I sat, on the stand, tears streaming down my face, without a Kleenex.  A very touching testimony.

Amid the good and bad, heart ache and incredible joy, I SO love being a Mom!  "Behold, my heart is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy"

Happy Graduation Brennan : )