Celestial Math

Relative to Tithing
I remember when Elder Oaks presided at our stake conference in the fall of 2009, he said that living with 90 percent of your income and 100 percent blessings would be more rewarding than living with 100 percent of your income. (I want to say he or another General Authority said that in something that was broadcast, so if you come across it, would you let me know?)
90% income + 100% blessings > 100% income



Relative to Prayer and Personal Revelation During Sacrament Meeting
We were talking about prayer in our Institute (scripture study) class one week. The teacher asked “Can you imagine what it’d be like to pray 5 times a day?” As though it were some outrageous number. I immediately made the comment (almost faster than I could think it) that, if we eat three meals a day and pray over each and also say our morning and evening prayers, we do pray 5 times a day.
The next Sunday, I was in church, wondering why our sacrament (traditional worship) service is 70 minutes. Why not an even hour? Or why not make it a quarter of an hour? Why 1 hour and 10 minutes? I opened the little notebook I jot notes in during meetings of spiritual significance and saw a reminder of my “Prayer: 5 a day” remark. I (willingly) did some quick math in my head (so you know this was inspired thinking) and discovered the following [fancy word I learned in 10th grade Geometry for “If..Then…” statements]s:
If…
1 prayer = 2 minutes
and…
5 prayers x 7 days = 35 prayers
then…
2 minutes x 35 prayers = 70 minutes of praying each week
If…
prayer is sharing our thoughts with our heavenly father
and…sacrament meeting is a time for our heavenly father to share His thoughts with us
then…isn’t it appropriate (and wonderful!) that we get equal amounts of time to communicate with each other?

Relative to Scripture Reading
Today, I was walking into my office building while thinking about something one of the counselors in the stake presidency* shared with us in stake conference this weekend. At the beginning of the year, they challenged everyone in the stake to read the Book of Mormon twice that year. He said it worked out to about 3 pages a day.
He said he did a rather unscientific study and determined it took the average person on average 4 minutes to read one page.
4 minutes x 3 pages = 12 minutes a day
Or 30 seconds per hour God gives you today.

Relative to Journaling (and Scripture Study)I remember my early morning seminary (scripture study) teacher had challenged us to read 10 minutes each day. About the same time, I had a Young Women’s leader give a lesson on the importance of journaling (which an amazing ten-year-old touched on in a talk during the Sunday session of conference). I decided to write every day for 14 minutes. That worked out to a minute for every hour I’d been given that day. I put the goal in mathematical form on a piece of construction paper and hung it on a mirror in my bedroom. (MLImoreM than I thought) I doubt I stuck with it for more than two weeks.
10 minutes scripture reading + 14 minutes journaling = 24 minutes = 1 minute per hour



*Some LDS lingo a’ la similes:
Ward/branch is like a city/town
Stake/district is like a county
Mission is like a state