Blake T. Ostler

“The word commandment does not refer to a command or military order that must be followed to avoid punishment; rather, the word comes from the Latin comanere, which means to “give assistance” or literally to “work hand in hand.” The commandments “give us a hand” by teaching us how to love one another and thus how to live a life in alignment with being with God in the world.”
― Blake T. Ostler, Fire on the Horizon: A Meditation on the Endowment and Love of Atonement

“The fruit of the Tree of Life is a blessing to us only after we have experienced the challenges of life. It teaches us that those experiences which seem to be the worst experiences of life are transformed into the greatest blessings of our lives. That which rips our hearts out of our chests and weakens our knees to the point of collapse is that which will taste the sweetest after we have passed through it. There is no way around this life. We must go through it. The challenges of life make us who and what we are. All of these things shall be for our experience and for our good (D&C 122:7)—but only in the perspective of looking back on the life that we could not fully see before passing through it. We can only give meaning to those experiences by allowing them to make us who we choose to be as we pass through life—until they become the sweetest and most desirable experiences of our lives.”
― Blake T. Ostler, Fire on the Horizon: A Meditation on the Endowment and Love of Atonement