Come Follow Me Meditations

Come Follow Me — Psalms

Psalm 23 gives us green pastures and still waters. A few psalms earlier, the same book is a man crying out that God has forsaken him. Both are in this week's reading.

Then Psalm 24 asks who gets to climb the hill of the Lord and stand in His holy place. The answer comes back: whoever has clean hands and a pure heart. It's a beautiful line, and it can sting, because most of us know exactly where our hands have been.

This week's lesson points to Brother Wilcox's message for anyone stuck there. He isn't describing a climb we make alone while God waits at the summit to inspect us. He's describing company on the way up.

The shepherd psalm says the same thing, a page earlier.

"Worthiness Is Not Flawlessness" — Bradley R. Wilcox, October 2021 general conference

Come Follow Me - Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd." Before David was ever a king, he was a boy on a hillside who knew every lamb by name - not by number, by name. So when he wrote his song, he did not write about a shepherd somewhere far away. He wrote my shepherd. The one who picks the soft grass and the quiet water before the sheep know they are thirsty, and who walks into the shadowed pass with them instead of waiting on the other side.

At the end of the day, the shepherd lay down in the doorway. That is how the sheep slept.

Save this for family scripture study, and send it to a parent putting a tired little one to bed tonight.

This week's bedtime story walks gently through Psalm 23 - now on YouTube. Link in bio.

Come Follow Me - Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God." A man sat on a hillside before sunrise, looked at the stars, and asked the oldest question a person can ask - what is man, that God would be mindful of him? He could have answered that smallness with more smallness. Instead he answered it with a crown.

The same hands that hung the stars bent low to make you.

Save this for your scripture study this week, and send it to someone who is walking into a heavy morning.

This week's morning meditation walks gently through Psalms 8, 19 and 24 - now on YouTube. Link in bio.

Come Follow Me - Psalm 46: "Be still, and know that I am God." The psalmist did not pretend he was fine. He said he was in a pit, in miry clay - the kind of ground that pulls you down slowly while you are still trying to stand. And God did not shout instructions from above it. He inclined. He leaned down, the way you lean toward a child so you can hear a small voice better.

The stillness comes first, and the knowing follows.

Save this for tonight, and send it to someone who has been waiting a long time for an answer.

This week's sleep meditation walks gently through Psalms 40, 46 and 27 - now on YouTube. Link in bio.

Come Follow Me - Psalm 24: "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?" A whole crowd sang that question on the way up, and the answer came back: he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart. It sounds like a door closing. None of us climb that hill with perfectly clean hands.

But read the next line. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord. Righteousness is something we are given, not something we manufacture on the way up.

You do not have to be finished to keep ascending.

Save this for your scripture study this week, and send it to someone who has been quietly stopped partway up the hill.

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Come Follow Me — the book of Job

Job loses almost everything in the space of one chapter. His flocks, his
servants, his ten children. A chapter later, his health. Then his friends arrive
and spend most of the book explaining that he must have done something to
deserve it.

He never gets the explanation he asks for. What he gets is a series of questions
about stars and rain and the wild goats of the rock. God answers a question
about suffering by widening the frame.

This week's lesson actually points to President Nelson's "Think Celestial!" for
that reason. His counsel isn't that trials are small. It's that our view of them
is narrow.

Job kept asking. He just stopped assuming he already knew what an answer should
look like.

"Think Celestial!" — Russell M. Nelson, October 2023 general conference

Come Follow Me — Job 1–2: "Even in the long night, God stayed close." This week's bedtime story follows a kind man named Job, who lost almost everything and did not know why. He was not being punished — the scriptures tell us that on the very first page. He sat in the dark with his questions, and God never went anywhere. Not for one single minute.

Hard things are never a sign that God is upset with you.

Save this for family scripture study this week, and send it to a parent whose little one is carrying a big question.

This week's bedtime story walks gently through Job — now on YouTube. Link in bio.