Author: admin

This story appears here courtesy of TheChurchNews.com. It is not for use by other media.

By Mary Richards, Church News

Two facts about Alice Warner Johnson were as important as anything else about her time on earth. 

One, she loved The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and her family above all else. And two, she devoted her life — even after it became nearly impossible to carry on — to help others through their trials, explained her obituary in 2019 after she died at age 55. 

Johnson is the author and composer of “O Lord, Who Gave Thy Life for Me,” which was included in the latest batch of new hymns for “Hymns—For Home and Church.”

She wrote the hymn while suffering from a progressive form of multiple sclerosis, which came with episodes of blindness and numbness and led to increasing, then total incapacity. 

The About the Hymns section of Gospel Library states this for this hymn: 

“Devastated as she declined, Sister Johnson pled with the Lord for more time to serve Him and her family. While learning to trust Him and surrender her will to His, she was inspired to write ‘O Lord, Who Gave Thy Life for Me.’” 

Her daughter, Katherine Pearse, remembers going into her mother’s office in the basement and watching her “hunched over her keyboard, meticulously working on the melodies and chords. … She spent hours writing and rewriting that beautiful hymn as her disease worsened and became more severe.” 

The hymn speaks of humbly going to the Lord and offering a sacrifice of a contrite soul and a broken heart. The second verse talks about bearing His yoke. In the end, the hymn says, “Now bind my grateful heart to Thine.” 

Scripture references in the new hymnbook for this hymn are Doctrine and Covenants 59:8 and Matthew 11:28–30, which include the Lord’s teachings on these themes. 

Pearse said that even in the worst moments, her mother remained positive and continued to share and serve in whatever way she could. 

“Most importantly, her faith never wavered,” Pearse told the Church News. “She gave thanks to God constantly, she looked to Christ as her support, and she lived by the Spirit in hopes that she could find ways to reach out to others in need.” 

‘The perfect way to honor her legacy’ 

Johnson grew up in Provo, Utah, as the oldest of 10 siblings. She showed remarkable gifts from a young age, including learning to read by the age of 3 and teaching herself to play piano. She performed in many musicals, wrote stories, sang in the University Singers at Brigham Young University and served a full-time mission to Taiwan. 

After college, she landed a prestigious job in Boston, Massachusetts, and had always aspired to become a wife and mother. After moving back to Utah in her 30s to help her dad start a new company, a mutual friend set her up with Paul Johnson, and they were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple in 1996. 

Two months after her second daughter, Pearse, was born, Johnson woke up in the morning to sudden blindness. She learned that she had an advanced form of multiple sclerosis. 

“This devastating blow did not stop my mom,” Pearse said. Johnson continued to pursue and share her musical and writing talents from her home in Lindon, Utah. Several of her hymns won Church music contests at this time. Later, moving to Eagle, Idaho, Johnson directed ward choirs and made it a joy for people to participate, Pearse said. 

Despite the danger that the disease would progress more rapidly with more children, the Johnsons — after much deliberation, prayer and priesthood blessings — had two more children. 

Soon, Johnson was unable to walk or drive. Pearse said she continued to write books and hymns from her bed and would call people to say she was thinking about them, offering ways to help them. Relief Society sisters who visited her would often leave saying they felt served by her instead. 

After five years of being completely bed-bound, Johnson passed away. Her funeral included a choir with people from her childhood and her wards in Boston, Lindon and Eagle singing in her honor. 

“Her life was filled with loving friends and family, incredible experiences, and so much music,” Pearse said. 

While Johnson received many awards and accolades throughout her life, she would say her crowning jewel was being a mother to her four children. While all of them are also musical, they strive to honor her by remembering her words — “kindness is the most important thing.” 

“Her hymn being included in the hymnbook is the perfect way to honor her legacy,” Pearse said. “The lyrics follow her story of terrible loss, but giving it over to the Lord. She truly did lay her burdens at His feet, trust His will, and even feel profound gratitude for her many blessings.” 

O Lord, Who Gave Thy Life for Me 
 
1. O Lord, who gave Thy life for me, 
I come now in humility 
And here my sacrifice impart: 
A contrite soul, a broken heart. 
Oh, may Thy love in mercy shine 
And bind my sorrowing heart to Thine. 
 
2. My burden at Thy feet I lay— 
My pride, my hurt, each willful way, 
The weight of all my sin and care— 
And in its place Thy yoke I’ll bear. 
Oh, may Thy love my soul refine 
And bind my trusting heart to Thine. 
 
3. My heart is full of love for Thee, 
Because I know Thou first loved me. 
Now by that love I’ll seek to live; 
Like Thee, I freely would forgive. 
Oh, may Thy love my life define 
And bind my willing heart to Thine. 
 
4. And as I strive to thus endure 
With cleaner hands and heart more pure, 
In all around I see Thy face 
And feel the bounties of Thy grace. 
O Savior, may Thy love divine 
Now bind my grateful heart to Thine. 
 

Learn more about all the new hymns in the “About the Hymns” resource in of Gospel Library. 

Copyright 2025 Deseret News Publishing Company.

Every half-decade or so, Justin Bieber sloughs off the callused skin of the pop superstar he became at age 15 to reveal the tender and quirky R&B singer he’s always been at heart. He did it in 2013 with his album “Journals,” then in 2020 with “Changes.”

Neither project did anything like the numbers of his shinier, smilier teen-idol stuff, though each seemed like a crucial reset for a guy battling the pressures of early onset celebrity. Now, at 31, he’s done it again with “Swag,” the surprise LP he dropped last week just hours after revealing it existed.

Like those earlier albums, the 21-track “Swag” comes after a period of change and tumult for Bieber. In 2022, citing the need to focus on his health, he called off a world tour behind the previous year’s “Justice” album; in 2023, he parted ways with his longtime manager, Scooter Braun; last year, he and his wife, Hailey Baldwin, had their first child together. (Somewhere in there he also sold the rights to his music catalogue for a reported $200 million.) More recently, he’s been caught on video in a series of confrontations with paparazzi that started people talking about his well-being.

“It’s not clocking to you that I’m standing on business,” he tells a photographer in one clip that went viral last month — so viral, in fact, that Bieber excerpts it on “Swag,” which puts his luscious crooning over spacey, cooled-out grooves full of pillowy synths, twanging electric guitars and reverbed chillwave-’80s beats.

What distinguishes “Swag” from “Journals” and “Changes” is that this album feels much rawer and more improvisatory than the earlier ones; the production throughout is murky and smeared, and the record includes a couple of demo-like tracks that suggest Bieber simply AirDropped unfinished voice memos from his phone to whomever was sitting behind the computer in the recording studio. (One of them, a gorgeous little gospel-blues ditty, is titled “Glory Voice Memo.”) The idea that “Swag” puts across pretty sympathetically is that a messy life — let’s not forget that Bieber is also involved in a Christian organization that some have compared to a cult — yields messy music.

“When the money comes and the money goes/ Only thing that’s left is the love we hold,” he sings in the thrumming “Butterflies,” which samples another of those paparazzi run-ins. “Walking Away,” a lightly psychedelic soul-rock jam, has him describing the challenges of his highly scrutinized marriage with an endearing frankness about his desire to wise up emotionally. (Braun, whom Bieber is said to have paid millions of dollars recently to settle an old debt, wrote on Instagram that “Swag” “is, without a doubt, the most authentically Justin Bieber album to date.”)

In un-polishing his music, the singer is also adapting to the scrappy and proudly idiosyncratic vibe of modern pop as found on records by the likes of SZA, Charli XCX, Lana Del Rey, even Drake — A-plus stars who’ve achieved domination in the streaming era not by honing a streamlined vision but by pursuing odd impulses and allowing the listener to feel like part of the journey. One of Bieber’s key collaborators here is Mk.gee, the mysterious guitar virtuoso whose 2024 debut made him perhaps the most talked-about musician’s musician of the last few years. “Swag” feels shaped by the way Mk.gee thinks about how a great pop song should balance novelty and familiarity. Other members of the creative team Bieber gathered for loose jam sessions at his home in Los Angeles include Dijon, a frequent partner of Mk.gee’s, and Carter Lang, who’s worked closely with SZA.

Given Bieber’s attentive nature and his good taste — think of his relatively ahead-of-the-curve participation in remixes of Wizkid’s “Essence” and “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee — it probably figures that in 2025 he’d make a record that imagines Phil Collins sitting in with Scritti Politti. Yet as a tinkerer luxuriating in rough edges, Bieber stands alone among his fellow white male pop stars (or at least the few of them who remain near the centre of the conversation): Benson Boone is doing well-rehearsed back flips on every awards show stage that will have him, while Ed Sheeran has said his upcoming album represents a return to his old hit-seeking ways after a spell in the folky wilderness. And then there’s Morgan Wallen, whose thematically gloomy “I’m the Problem” is so sonically dialed in that you almost fear what the album’s enormous success will end up doing to the guy.

Does Bieber relish his outlier status? In one of several very cringe interludes on “Swag,” the internet comedian Druski tells the singer that, although his skin is white, his soul is Black — to which Bieber, clearly operating without the guidance of a strong manager, responds, “Thank you.” Still, you can’t argue with Druski’s assessment that he can “hear the soul” on this album: Bieber’s singing has never sounded more instinctual than in songs like the crunchy “Daisies” and the country-soul “Devotion,” and even when they’re bad, his lyrics have an awkward charm, as in “Go Baby,” in which he plugs the iPhone-case-slash-lip-gloss-holder sold by his wife’s beauty brand, and “405,” a song about flirting with Baldwin in the car that rhymes “Hit the gas” with “Spider-Man on your ass.”

Shaggy, disarming, often quite beautiful, the LP argues that swag is not something to be taught (as indeed Bieber once famously enlisted someone to do) — neither a skill nor a technique to be perfected and deployed. It’s a state of mind, bro. Is that clocking to you?

Twenty-six years after Noah Wyle was last nominated for an Emmy, for his role as Dr. John Carter on NBC’s long-running medical drama “ER,” the actor has scrubbed back in for a chance at a golden trophy.

The star and executive producer of “The Pitt” received a nomination for lead actor in a drama series for his role as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, and overall, HBO Max’s breakout hit received 13 nominations. Wyle will be competing alongside Sterling K. Brown (“Paradise”), Pedro Pascal (“The Last of Us”), Gary Oldman (“Slow Horses”) and Adam Scott (“Severance”) for the award.

The actor’s skill around a fictional emergency room has yielded strong results. While it’s his first Emmy nomination since 1999, it’s the actor’s sixth Emmy nomination for playing a doctor — the previous five were for his supporting role as the med student-turned-hospital veteran on “ER.” Tuesday’s nomination is his first ever in the lead actor in a drama category.

Wyle was in production on “The Pitt’s” sophomore season on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank when he got the celebratory news, and The Times caught up with him during a break.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Noah, congratulations! Production on Season 2 is underway. You were on set when you got the news?

Thank you. Yes, we’re working today. I was on set. We shot the first scene. I asked to go to the bathroom. On a bathroom break, I checked my phone and saw a text from my wife that said, “Baby!” I thought, “Oh.” By the time I came back onto set, everybody was starting to get very excited. Then just now, [R.] Scott Gemmill [the show’s creator] came down and made a formal announcement and read off all the 13 nominations, and that just exploded the crew and cast background into massive celebration.

How do you get back to work after this?

Oh, so easily. I’m going [to] go in there, and we’re gonna get right back at it. I don’t know. I guess with a little bit of a bounce in our stride. When I look at the sound department, who works so hard on our show, parsing out all that overlapping dialogue — to see them get recognized, and see our makeup departments, both prosthetic and non-prosthetic, be recognized for their labor — everybody puts such pride into their work, and I am inspired by so many incredible artists who bring their expertise to this place every day. To see everybody be recognized makes it feel even more special, because it’s truly a group effort.

Dr. John Carter on “ER” was a newbie to the healthcare industry, bright-eyed and eager to learn. Dr. Robby in “The Pitt” is a veteran of the industry, sort of jaded by the systemic challenges but as committed as ever to the patients. How is it to track someone deep in their career at this stage in yours?

There was a lot of one-to-one identification with Carter back then, as I was new and eager to be good at my job and seen as being good at my job — both ambitious, both aspirational. This time around, it’s much more gratifying because you have perspective. When you’re 23, you don’t necessarily know what the peaks and valleys of a life or career are going to be, but at 53, you have a better understanding of the road traveled and the road ahead, and it just makes this feel even sweeter.

The show is confronting issues changing in our world in real time, and you’re inhabiting someone behind the headlines, in the trenches, dealing with the realities of those issues. What intrigues you about what Dr. Robby and the rest of the characters on this show say about this moment in time, especially as the healthcare industry is on the precipice of more drastic change?

Season 1 was trying to put a spotlight on the community of front-line workers and hospital personnel who’ve been doing sort of unending tours of duty since the pandemic. It was a thesis on tracking the emotional and physical toll that it’s taken on our workforce, in a way to try to inspire the next generation, but really to also highlight the heroism of people that are in the trenches now. Unfortunately, we’ve had to move on from that thesis because the world events since that [time] have taken such a turn, and healthcare in particular is in such crosshairs that it is both extremely incumbent upon us to stay current in our storytelling and reflective of what’s happening. But it’s really quite a challenge to try and peer into a crystal ball and see what the world will look like 13 months from now, when these episodes air, because the events are changing on the ground daily, so quickly that things that we didn’t think would have come to pass by now have already come and gone and been normalized. So it’s a challenge.

The last time we spoke, you talked about how you strolled into work every morning, sort of mimicking Dr. Robby’s routine — that entrance to the hospital, listening to “Baby” by Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. Is that still the case for Season 2?

No, we have a different opening this year. So, I have a different ritual and routine every morning. But I’m a creature of habit, and so I do my odd, little eccentric things every day to get ready.

How are you feeling about this new season? It was recently revealed that your co-star Tracy Ifeachor would not appear in Season 2; there has been speculation about that decision and whether it’s linked to her allegedly being a member of a London evangelical megachurch that performs “gay exorcisms.” Can you comment on the reason for parting ways?

I can only comment and say that that was all revelatory to me. All these stories that have come out subsequently are news to us. It had nothing to do with anything like that.

How are you feeling about that kind of cast change early in the show’s run, or what it means for Season 2?

We made it clear at the outset that part of being in a realistic teaching hospital is a revolving door of characters, whether you have somebody not come back, or you have somebody die, or whether you have somebody rotate to another department or go on another specialty. These are the things that we pull our hair out in the writers’ room trying to figure out how to keep this ensemble together for as long as time possible, but knowing that there has to be a revolution of characters coming through to keep the place realistic. And the character of Collins was a significant character in the first season, and Tracy was amazing. I loved working with her. I wish her all the best in her future. I heard she got another gig.

As far as how this impacts your character, there’s concern about Dr. Robby’s mental health. Fans want to see Dr. Robby smile. Are you smiling in Season 2?

[Laughs] If it means that much to you, I’ll trying to work one in.

I would imagine it’ll be easy today. How do you plan to celebrate?

I looked at that list of nominees that I’m in the company of, and I send my congratulations to all of them. It’s incredibly gratifying and humbling to be included in their company. I’m going to celebrate quietly with my family and come back to work tomorrow.

Have you heard from your “ER” counterparts? George Clooney? Eriq La Salle?

They don’t get up this early. [Laughs]

What’s a memory that stands out from your last Emmys experience?

Talk about perspective. It was such a beautiful, wonderful, heady time for me that the last time I was nominated, I was annoyingly blasé about it, and if I had known that it was going to be 20-plus years before I was invited to the party again, I think I would have had a better time.

Before I let you get back to work, tell me: what’s the medical procedure on the docket for you today?

Today I’m removing some taser barbs from the back of a thrashing patient’s neck. We’re shooting, actually, an episode that I wrote, so it’s really kind of a heavy week already.

A fiery teaser was recently dropped on July 6, 2025, for the upcoming film, Dhurandhar. Written and directed by Aditya Dhar, of Uri: The Surgical Strike fame. The first glimpse has grabbed headlines with the never-before-seen looks of an exceptional star cast, especially the main lead, Ranveer Singh. However, a recent video from the sets of the upcoming film shows a Pakistani flag, which is not sitting well with many netizens.  

Pakistani flag in the sets of Dhurandhar

Dhurandhar is currently being shot in Khera, a village in Ludhiana, Punjab. A recent video from the film set shows Ranveer Singh in the frame, with a Pakistani flag visible in the background. Many netizens shared their displeasure at the flag being present on the set. One Instagram user wrote, “Pakistan ka flag kyu lagya ? Who permitted for it ? Shamefully act”. Another user asked where are the people who were asking to boycott Diljit Dosanjh over his casting Pakistani actress, Hania Amir in the film, Sardaar Ji 3. Talking about this one commenter wrote, “Diljit nho boycott karn wale kithe ne hon ?”

However, the story of Dhurandhar is based on true events and is reportedly set to showcase the bravery of India’s special agents in Pakistan. Hence, the premise of the film is based in Pakistan, but due to high tensions between the two nations and security concerns, shooting in the country is not feasible. So, Punjab’s Khera village will be shown as Pakistan in the film. Although there were comments criticising the film for its portrayal of the flag, many people also pointed out this aspect of Dhurandhar. 

Many netizens supported the film’s team over the Pakistani flag

One netizen explained that since the story takes place in Pakistan, the filmmakers had to showcase this somehow to lend more authenticity to the film. The user wrote, “When pakistani flag is being shown in the movie they are establishing the fact that they are showing this as a Pakistan area…obviously waha jakey toh shoot nahi karengey nah… koi bhi situation ko kisi bhi random situation kay saath kaise compare kar saktey ho?”. 

Another user talked about how the presence of a Pakistani flag in the scene was being compared to Diljit’s controversy of casting a Pakistani actress in his film. The Instagram commenter said, “Hiring Pakistani actors when there are better actors waiting to get films here cannot be compared to this at all.. Faltu me controversy karke kya fayada hai..” Many also said that the problem with casting Pakistani actors is that they get paid from the pockets of Indians; however, showing a Pakistani flag, which must be the scene’s requirement, doesn’t give any money to Pakistan. Talking about this one user said, “Filmmaker not paid any fee to Pakistani flag…and why to give employment to Pakistanis when we have so many artists in Punjab too”. 

More about Dhurandhar 

The teaser of Dhurandhar has come as a happy surprise for everyone. People were aware of the fact that Ranveer Singh will be seen in the lead role, however, the teaser revealed a stellar cast with many acclaimed actors. Apart from Ranveer, the starcast includes Sanjay Dutt, R. Madhavan, Akshaye Khanna, and Arjun Rampal. All of these actors are critically acclaimed and well-loved by fans as well for their acting prowess. However, it is not yet clear which of these characters are antagonistic and which are on the side of the hero. 

To watch the video, click here. 

What are your thoughts on a Pakistani flag being present on the film set of Ranveer Singh’s Dhurandhar? 

Also Read: Meet Sara Arjun, Ranveer’s Co-star In ‘Dhurandhar’, 20 Years Younger Than Him, Former Child Actress

AWESOME NEWS! Now you can download BollywoodShaadis app and never miss a story. Get App

AWESOME NEWS! Now you can download BollywoodShaadis app and never miss a story. Choose your device Android or IOS (Apple)