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This devotional address, entitled Some Lessons on Faith and Fear, was given on May 6th of 2008 by Gregory

Clark, then the Associate Dean of the BYU College of Humanities.

I'm humbled by the opportunity to speak to you today,

and I pray that what I have to say will be helpful to you and pleasing to the Lord.

I approach this opportunity with some fear,

fear that I might not get the doctrine quite right,

fear that those of you who know me will recognize the extent to which I don't

practice what I'm going to preach. Fear that because I have more questions about these matters

than answers, I won't have much to say that's useful. But I'll proceed upon faith, and that

really is the point of my message today. I'm primarily a teacher of writing,

and for me, this speaking assignment has been primarily a writing assignment.

It isn't finished, but time ran out, and I had to stop.

That's the way it is for me with important writing assignments.

It may be that the most important writing

assignments are the ones we aren't able to finish. We aren't able to finish them because

they engage us in a process of learning that doesn't have an end. I started this assignment

with a plan for the finished project, But in the process of writing, I learned

things I hadn't anticipated, and now I'm going to say things that are not what I had initially

planned. I had planned to say what I thought you needed to hear, but I've ended up preparing

...