SMALL GLASS STONES (2025-13)

 I took my laptop computer to the shop for repairs. They need to keep it for a few days while they fix it. My mighty little MacBook Pro is a powerful machine which I use pretty much every day. I feel a serious amount of distress without it. Like most people/places/and things, we often don’t know how much something matters to us until it's gone. 

I’ve resorted to using my teeny tiny handheld computer, which also serves as a phone, to do my daily Lenten writing. My chubby little fingers and stubby little thumb are proving to be a hindrance. 

I am thinking, however, past this little frustration, how amazing it is that I can hold this little piece of glass, have it interpret my misspellings, preserve what I write and share it with people across the world. 

old computer punch cards

When I was small our sister Sue had a job as a computer something-or-other… meaning I’m not sure what they called the people who punched info into the massive machines back in the olden days. She used to bring home stacks of punch cards; cardstock weight pieces of Manila paper, about 4” x 8”, into which were punched rectangular holes that looked like what we now call pixels. Each card was different. Ann Marie, Libby and I got a large cardboard box somewhere, like a refrigerator box, cut it and colored it, used a separated kitchen knife to cut slits in it and turned it into what we thought a computer would look like. One of us stood inside the box and another outside, feeding those little cards full of information into our make believe computer. When I stood inside I disguised my voice to sound like the robot from the TV show Lost in Space and whined through one of the holes in the box:

“That does not compute.”

The massive multi story prototype computer, on which my big sister worked, stored far less information than I hold in my hand right now. We could never have imagined how quickly technology would evolve.

I remember as a teenager, pondering the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the hands of the prophet Joseph Smith in the 1800's. It’s part of our history as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Joseph had been led, through divine sources, to an ancient book that had been buried in North America. That book, its language pressed into metal plates, now known as the Book of Mormon, was written in a language Joseph did not understand. In fact no one spoke that ancient Egyptian language anymore. It’s a long and involved story, and if I did not have the feeling in my heart that confirms its validity, I would think it was pretty far-fetched. 

Anyway, Joseph was instructed to translate that writing. Along with the book that had been written on plates of gold came tools to help in the translation. One of those tools was a seer stone, a sort of glass stone that could be held in the hand. As a child, I couldn’t imagine how something like that would be able to translate. And yet I sit here in my easy chair with a piece of glass in my hand and it is interpreting what I speak into it because my fingers can’t move fast enough.

I'm not saying the iPhone is a seer stone. It was the the item itself that did the work, it was the users. All I'm saying is that some things we think are crazy end up not being as improbable as we once thought.

That translated book, a spiritual and historical record of the inhabitants of the American continents, is a beloved source of guidance and comfort as a scriptural companion to the Old and New Testament in the Holy Bible.

companions

I’m reminded that divinely appointed things that seem ridiculous and impossible, given further light and knowledge, become possible. I remind myself I only use a fraction of the capacity of my brain, and that represents to me that we have only a fraction of understanding of things eternal. For that reason, I trust my heart as much as I trust that 10% of my brain that has full use.

I hope to guard and nurture my heart source as much as my brain source. And I am mindful of how mysterious and beautiful the ways of God may seem.