Samaritan

Jorja was really busy today.  She had softball pictures this morning. Jazzie invited her over for a few hours, then softball practice again for two hours.  Wow!  She loved it though.  Audrey came over while Jorja was at Jazzie's house.  Jorja was gone, so she played with Preston. They built a giant fort and had a great time.  She was here most of the day. Max came over tonight because my dad went to the adult session of Stake Conference.  I talked to my dad a bit about my lesson when he came to pick Max up.  My dad is giving a talk in Stake Conference tomorrow.  We will most likely be teaching at the exact same time.

I found an article in the Ensign from 2007.  It was by John Welch who was a professor at J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU.  Anyway, the article is titled The Good Samaritan: Forgotten Symbols.  Wow.  That was interesting.  He shows how the Good Samaritan teaches the Plan of Salvation.  Almost every word has a meaning.  The shortened version is, "The man who was going down is Adam (us).  Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world.  The robbers are hostile powers.  The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ.  The wounds are disobedience, the beast is the Lord's body, the inn (which accepts all who wish to enter) is the Church, the manager of the inn is the head of the Church and the Samaritan's promise he will return represents the Savior's second coming."  I had never, ever thought of the parable like that.  I loved this.  The article went into great detail. For instance the words 'went down' (A certain man went down from Jerusalem....  The story in Luke 10 implies that the man went down intentionally, knowing the risks that would be involved in the journey. No one forced him to go down to Jericho.  He apparently felt that the journey was worth the well-known risks of such travel....  I love that. Just like we all made the decision to come to earth even though we knew there were risks.  We decided the journey was worth it.