WREKATION
Jesus Vacations: Learning to See His Kindness
Breaking news: The 196th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will feature four general sessions, a solemn assembly… and, unexpectedly, a talk by brother Greg O. Muller, an early-Zion builder. *** Yes, you read that correctly. Jesus has (apparently) called me to speak at the upcoming General Conference. I will be delivering my remarks remotely—via Zoom—during a special extended session at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/82698119781…
To be clear: I will be speaking “at” conference. is-is
For those unable to attend, Jesus has graciously approved an advance copy of the talk He and I prepared this morning: —
Jesus Vacations: Learning to See His Kindness
My dear brothers and sisters, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today. I pray that the Spirit may attend us and that my words may be aligned, however imperfectly, with the will of the Lord. I also wish to express my love and sustaining support for our living prophet and for all those who are called to lead and serve. I am grateful for their guidance, even as I try, in my own small way, to learn how to see the hand of the Lord in everyday life. Jesus has been teaching me—slowly, patiently—that the way of salvation, for me, begins with learning how to look. Not just to glance, not just to notice in passing, but to really look. To watch. To pay attention to what He is doing in my life and in the lives of others.
I have come to believe that if I want to understand the nature of God, I must become a more careful watcher—careful, careful, careful. “Look to Christ and live,” the scripture says, but I am realizing that looking is not passive. It is an active, disciplined, and sometimes painful way of seeing.
And what I am learning to see is this: I must assume the best of Jesus. I must give Him the benefit of the doubt. Even when it strains credulity. Even when the circumstances resemble Job, or the man born blind—stories where suffering is real, unexplained, and uncomfortable. I am being invited into a more charitable reading of God’s actions. A way of seeing that assumes He is kind, that He knows what He is doing, and that—even when I cannot understand it—He is acting in love.
As President Oakes has taught, the Lord’s ways are higher than our ways, and His timing is not always our own. I am learning, in small and sometimes surprising ways, what that might mean. This way of seeing did not come to me as a doctrine. It came to me as a parable. A parable lived out through a friend of mine.
— The Handyman Who Cannot Rest
I have a friend who is a contractor—a handyman. He is skilled, thoughtful, and deeply committed to helping others. But he has a problem: he cannot prioritize his own needs above the needs of his customers. If someone calls, he goes. If something breaks, he fixes it. If someone needs help, he cannot say no. And because of this, he suffers. His physical health suffers. His mental health suffers. He becomes exhausted, worn down, stretched too thin.
I have watched this pattern play out over decades. And yet, something curious happens in his life. His truck breaks down. Not once, not randomly, but repeatedly—at just the kinds of times when he most needs rest. Sometimes it’s mechanical failure. Sometimes it’s weather—heavy snow that halts work entirely. Sometimes it’s his health forcing him to stop.
And every time, when I go to see him, I find him doing something different. He is reading. He is studying. He is writing. He is wandering his property, harvesting wild edibles, thinking, learning, exploring. He is, in a word, at rest. He is doing the very things he loves—the things he would never allow himself to do if his truck were running and his phone were ringing.
And slowly, over time, a thought began to form in me. What if this is not random? What if this is kindness?
— The Parable of Vacation
I began to see my friend’s life as a kind of parable—a story Jesus was teaching me, line upon line. A parable of what I now call a “Jesus vacation.” My friend is not incapable of joy. He is not incapable of rest. But he is, for whatever reason—personality, wiring, perhaps even mental health—incapable of choosing rest when work is available. The call of responsibility overrides the call of his own soul. So what does a loving God do with someone like that? Perhaps—this is my best guess—He intervenes.
Perhaps He creates space. Perhaps He stops the machine. A broken truck becomes a forced sabbath. A snowstorm becomes a season of stillness. An illness becomes a pause. These are not vacations my friend would choose. But they are, in effect, vacations given to him.
And I have come to believe—tentatively, humbly, but increasingly—that these interruptions may be gifts.
— Learning to Name What I See
As I have watched not just this friend, but others, I have begun to see similar patterns. Friends who burn out until something breaks. Friends whose mental health forces them into stillness. Friends whose lives, left to their own momentum, would never slow down. And I have found myself naming what I see, almost playfully, but also reverently: A WORK-cation—for those whose work is actually their refuge. A WRECK-cation—like when my handyman friend hit a deer and lost his truck for weeks. A DEPRESS-cation—when another friend’s bipolar cycles force him into withdrawal from work and activity.
These names are imperfect, even uncomfortable. I hold them lightly. But they help me articulate something I am trying to see: That God may be at work even in the disruptions. That what looks like loss may carry a hidden kindness. That what feels like interruption may, in some mysterious way, be provision.
— A Harder Lesson: Letting Go of Control
There is a part of this story that humbles me deeply. For years, I gave my handyman friend what I thought was good advice: “You should have two working vehicles. That way, when one breaks down, you can still work.” It made sense. It was practical. It was responsible.
And then, one day, I realized—this may have been terrible advice. Because if he had two working vehicles, he would never stop. He would push through every breakdown, every warning sign, every limit his body and mind were trying to set. He would work himself into deeper exhaustion. And the very mechanism through which rest enters his life would be removed.
It was as if I suddenly saw: what I had been trying to fix might actually be something God was using to care for him. That realization unsettled me. It forced me to reconsider how often I assume I know what is best for others.
— Giving God the Benefit of the Doubt
So here is the center of this thought: Jesus is teaching me how to see. He is teaching me to form better guesses about what He is doing. Not perfect certainty—but more charitable interpretations. More trust-filled stories. Stories that assume His kindness rather than His indifference.
Do I literally believe that Jesus directed a deer into my friend’s truck? I both believe and do not believe. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” But I do believe this: the Savior knows us perfectly. He knows our limits, our tendencies, and even our inability to rest when rest is what we most need.
— Learning to Look and Live
This way of seeing does not remove pain. But it changes something in me. It opens my eyes. It allows me to see not just chaos, but potential care. Jesus is inviting me to become a better watcher. Because perhaps—just perhaps—He is more kind than I have yet dared to believe.
— Reprise: A Larger Pattern
There is one more thing I feel invited to say—something I hold with open hands, something that feels less like a conclusion and more like a quiet prophecy. My friend, the handyman, may not just be a single story. He may be a microcosm.
Because as I look around, I do not see just one man who cannot rest. I see a whole world that cannot rest. I see an industrialized system that runs like a machine—relentless, efficient, demanding—where the voice of “productivity” sounds almost like the voice of God, calling people to keep going, keep fixing, keep producing.
And many of us, like my friend, do not know how to say no. We do not know how to lie down in green pastures. We do not know how to sit beside still waters. So what does a loving God do with a world like that?
The same thing, perhaps, that He does with my friend. If He cannot invite us into rest… He will make us lie down. “Maketh me to lie down in green pastures” has begun to sound different to me—less like a gentle suggestion, and more like a loving insistence. And so I find myself wondering—again, this is my best guess—whether what I have seen in small, personal ways may also unfold in larger, collective ways.
That just as my friend receives forced vacations, so too might entire systems be brought to a halt—a kind of global vacation approximation, a pause, a breaking, a reset. We saw a glimpse of this in 2020. Not the full thing, perhaps, but a sign. A whisper.
And I wonder if something larger is coming—not out of cruelty, but out of the same kind of strange kindness I see in my friend’s life. A disruption that might feel like loss, but also carry an invitation—to come alive again, to choose differently, to build differently, to rest.
The scriptures speak of the fall of Babylon, and I wonder if part of that falling is also mercy—a chance to begin again. Because when my friend’s truck breaks down, he does not just suffer. He reads. He learns. He writes. He becomes himself again. And when the work resumes, there is always the possibility that he will carry something new back into his life—that he might choose a little more wisely, rest a little more intentionally, and not need the next interruption to be quite so severe.
And so my hope—my prayer—is this: that if and when larger “vacations” come, we will not waste them; that we will come alive in them; that we will see what Jesus is doing; and that when we return to building, we will build a different kind of world—a world with more green pastures, more still waters, more space for rest that is chosen, not forced. Because perhaps the deepest kindness of all would be learning to lie down before we are made to.
— Closing Testimony
My dear brothers and sisters, I testify that Jesus Christ lives. I testify that He is involved in the details of our lives, even in ways we do not yet understand. I testify that He is kind. And I testify that as we learn to see Him—to truly see Him—we will come to trust Him more fully.
And one more thing. This is just what I believe. I am no General Authority. I could be wrong. If there are errors here…well, they are the errors of one man, named “me”. God have mercy on my soul. These are my best guesses, at this time. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
(Oh, and if you want to know more you can go to zioncoalition.org…. but only do so if Jesus tells you to. Otherwise you are forbidden.)
The J&J Reality Show (on Jesus TV) – a companion piece for a later General Conference?)
Jesus Writings: Learning to See His Purpose in the Broken Places
My dear brothers and sisters, I would like to share another small parable—another “best guess”—as I continue learning how to look more carefully at what Jesus may be doing in the lives of those around me. As I have tried to adopt this framework of giving Jesus the benefit of the doubt, of assuming His kindness even when it strains belief, I have found that new patterns begin to emerge—not certainty, but possibilities; not doctrine, but glimpses.
This is the story of another friend. This friend is a writer, and he is a very good one. But his life, at least outwardly, looks like a wreck.
He has been separated from his family for many years—nearly a decade. He lost their trust during a period of mental illness. He has not been able to maintain stable, gainful employment. His family is large—very large—and the separation has been painful, complicated, and enduring.
For most people looking in from the outside, his life might appear as a cautionary tale—something broken, something tragic, something to be explained, corrected, or even quietly dismissed.
But as I have watched him carefully over time, I have begun to see something else. He writes—relentlessly, faithfully, beautifully. He is, in my observation, a gifted writer, and more than that, he is a Godly man.
I have seen enough in his life—small miracles, quiet endurance, continued faith—to believe that God loves him deeply. And so I have found myself asking the same question I asked with my handyman friend: What if this is not random? What if this, too, is kindness? Here is my best guess—my “Jesus guess.” :
What if God, for a wise and difficult purpose, has cleared the field of this man’s life? What if the very things that appear to have been taken from him—family proximity, stable employment, conventional structure—have also, in a paradoxical way, freed him?
Freed him from obligations that would otherwise consume his time, his energy, his attention; freed him, not into ease, but into focus. Because one thing has remained constant in his life: he writes.
Even as he moves between temporary jobs—handyman work, delivery driving, small and unstable forms of income—he continues to write.
When he has tried to step into a more conventional, full-time work life, something breaks down—his mind, his body, his circumstances—and redirects him back again to writing.
I once told him to consider a possibility—not as doctrine, but as a lens. What if there are times when God allows, or even orchestrates, an imbalance in a person’s life for a higher purpose? What if there are callings that do not fit neatly into the structure of a balanced, predictable, socially approved life?
We can think of figures—artists, prophets, creators—whose lives did not look stable by ordinary standards, people whose contributions required long seasons of isolation, obsession, or singular focus. What if, in some cases, God permits the disruption of one kind of life so that another kind of work can emerge?
Again, I say this carefully, humbly, and with full awareness that I could be wrong. But I have wondered: Would Jesus ever “make” a man to lie down—not just in green pastures of rest, but in green pastures of creation? Would He ever walk a man beside still waters not to remove him from solitude, but to place him in it—so that he and Jesus could write together?
This interpretation does not erase the pain. My friend suffers. It is no small thing to be separated from one’s family. It is no small thing to feel that one’s life has gone off course. It is no small thing to live with instability, uncertainty, and the weight of what has been lost.
And I do not pretend that this suffering is easy or that it is fully explained by any story I can tell. But alongside that suffering, I also see something else: a man doing what he loves, a man whose soul is fed by the act of writing, a man who continues, despite everything, to create—and I cannot ignore that.
I am aware that others may look at this same situation and see it very differently. They may see only dysfunction, only loss, only the consequences of poor decisions or illness—and they may be right, at least in part.
But I am trying to learn a different way of seeing, a way that asks again and again: What might Jesus be doing here? What would it look like if this, too, were guided—at least in part—by a kind and intentional hand?
And this leads me to a broader question: If Jesus can give “vacations” to those who cannot rest, might He also give “callings” to those who cannot conform? Might He shape lives—sometimes painfully, sometimes disruptively—in order to bring forth something that would not otherwise exist?
We think of artists, musicians, writers—people whose lives often appear unbalanced, even chaotic from the outside—and yet from those lives come works that move, shape, and bless the world. Is it possible—again, just a possibility—that God sometimes allows the breaking of one structure to make space for another?
I do not claim certainty. I am not a General Authority. I am simply a man trying to learn how to look. But as I look at my friend, I find that I cannot easily dismiss what I see. I see a life that has been stripped down. I see a man who continues to write. And I see—at least possibly—the kindness of a God who knows exactly what He is doing.
My prayer is that I—and perhaps we—can learn to see more clearly, to assume more generously, and to trust more deeply. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.