Thoughts... Some Easter Related

Saturday morning I headed to the grocery store to purchase strawberries. Yep, that's all. I had been craving them for a few days, and now they're on sale enough that I could justify buying them. As I pulled out of my parking spot with my precious cargo, I looked to my left and saw a gentleman, bent over with age, carefully take the cellophane-wrapped flowers out of his carriage (or "basket," if you're from the West) and place them in the back seat of his car. The rest of the groceries most likely went into the open trunk, but the flowers deserved special care. I imagined that he was taking them to his wife, probably a white-haired lady also bent over with age, to place in a vase for their Easter dinner centerpiece. And then that small act of putting his flowers in the back seat of his car suddenly represented all the love he had for the one for whom the flowers had been bought, and I thought, he is a great man; he buys flowers.

Then I saw a group of men at a nearby park playing basketball.  And I thought, there is a group of LDS men. Even if they weren't, they could have been. They were all in T-shirts and knee length shorts.

Strawberry pie makes an excellent dessert after Easter dinner.

I was excited to see when I came home tonight from my Conference weekend excursion that my sweet pepper seeds have started to sprout. Apparently, 69 degrees is too cold, even inside, but 72 is not... a few degrees of warmth makes a big difference, apparently.  It seems only fitting that they should sprout on Easter. The sun gives life just as the Son gives life. I love finding symbolism in the everyday events of mortality that points me to God and Jesus Christ.

Eight hours of TV is a lot in one weekend. But it was worth it. I really appreciated that many of the talks were centered around what we can do to strengthen the youth of the Church and to strengthen our families. And I really felt the Spirit when the member of the Seventy talked about how sometimes our Father causes us pain for brief moments (relative to eternity) because He knows it will spare us greater pain (or even spiritual death) later. He likened it to when a mother takes her child in for an immunization. A little crying now is better than a lot of suffering later. That resonated with me.

The Conference excursion also involved a wonderful sunshine-filled weekend, time outside, and lots of good food, by the way. It was a wonderful escape from the routine of usual life.