thoughts

I've been thinking a lot lately.  When you look at our lives, each of us is constantly thinking, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  So considering this, it's no suprise I've been thinking a lot lately.  :D

Anyways, I have been thinking a lot about choices.  I recently started working at a hotel in Logan, and I am the only person that doesn't smoke, drink coffee, have tatooes, or drink coffee or tea.  I run their breakfast buffet in the mornings.  The other girl that runs it on the days I don't have multiple body piercings, tatooes, and smokes.  If I stayed at a hotel and saw someone looking like that, I'd not eat breakfast there. 

So I've been wondering how someone who is a child of God can choose to deface their bodies like that.  I understand that she probably doesn't read the Bible.  This is judgemental of me, I know.  But it still seems that way.  But how can she and I, who are about the same age, be so different?  If anyone who reads this wants to comment, please do!  I love suggestions and comments.

I am still not sure of the answers.  I have thoughts, which I try to bounce off of people when I can. I love discussing ideas with others.  That is something many in our society don't seem comfortable doing.  I'm not sure if the average man discussed ideas like this 100 years ago, because I wasn't alive then.  But I still believe taking about things is important. 

One of my ideas about agency has nothing to do with the previous paragraphs questions.  I have thought that agency is a form of bondage.  I know agency is the greatest God has given His children on earth.  I also understand that there is consequences.  Bondage I believe many people take to mean negative things, like slavery.  People who were slaves could still choose whether they wanted to obey their masters or overseers wishes.  But they had to deal with the consequences if they disobeyed.

I don't believe God will whip us, or maybe kill us if we disobey him.  But there are always consequences. 

2 Nephi 2: 16, 27
Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.
27 Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

So we have the choice.  People in bondage still have the choice to disobey or obey.  That choice is still there.  But the punishment, or consequence, will always be there.  God is a little bit more understanding and just than man, is all. 

Also, some books I've read recently:

The Secret Man by Bob Woodword.  This is an excellent book about Mark Felt, who is dubbed 'Deep Throat' in the book All the Presidents Men by Woodword and Carl Bernstein.  It is awesome.  I am very interested in the Watergate era.

Papa Married a Mormon by John D. Fitzgerald.  If you have read the Great Brain, or any of Fitzgeralds other books, this one is by far the best.  It is the story of his parents and how they met, married and moved out West.  An excellent read.