Brightly Beams our Father’s Mercy, From His lighthouse evermore

But to us He gives the keeping, Of the lights along the shore.

Dark the night of sin has settled, Loud the angry billows roar

Eager eyes are watching longing, For the lights along the shore.

Trim your feeble lamp my brother, Some poor sailor tempest tossed

Trying now to make the harbor, In the darkness may be lost.

Let the lower lights be burning, Send a gleam across the wave,

Some poor fainting, struggling seaman, You may rescue: you may save.

~Poem by Phillip P Bliss 1838-1876

I was “some poor fainting, struggling seaman” when the phone rang that afternoon.  On the other end, I heard the gentle voice of my friend, and a feeling of relief washed over me in pure gratitude for the calming reassurance that hearing her voice gave me.  She couldn’t have known how I wished I could talk to her that afternoon.  [My “eager eyes (were) watching longing.”] I mean, she knew I was struggling because we kept in touch by email, but I never expected her to call because I know she is very busy.  The roiling turmoil going on in my breast at that very moment she called was getting louder and harder to control.  And that is when the phone rang and she “Sent a beam across the way.”

We talked, and I cried. I cried because of what was going on in my life and she offered me the reassuring coos of a friend much like a mother with her child…”let it out”…”it’s okay to cry”…and on and on as if she had nothing better to do than to be with me and “hold my hand.”  She was the “light along the shore…” I was the “sailor tempest tossed…”

Though it took a while, I finally calmed down and felt a little better.  Feelings of gratitude washed over me like waves of the sea washing on the shore.  In her gentle way, she had taken the “debris” of my situation and reassuringly put it into perspective for me.  I was able to breathe again.  I was steadier.  She “sent a gleam across the wave…” and I was so thankful for her call.  She couldn’t have known how I felt as we hung up…almost as if God’s hand had come down from Heaven and steadied the pitching of my “ship” and calmed my stormy seas.  She was an instrument in His hands that day to still my troubled heart and sooth my anxious soul.

In this moment of my life, through the inspiration and love of my friend, I was able to see the “lower lights burning along the shore.”  She was and is the guardian of a sacred trust: to lift up the hands that hang down and strengthen the feeble knees. (See Hebrew 12:12)  Her actions let me know that the Lord was with me in my time of need, just as He promised in Isaiah 41:10:  Fear not, I am with thee, be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.  She reached out and became the instrument of God through which the balm of Gilead was administered. It was in this way that God chose to strengthen me. Through the kindness and love of another.

Kindness can never be underestimated.  It is the action through which Charity is administered unto the children of men.  “Paying it forward is the only way I can “pay it back.”

Thank you, my friend…I love you.

In Remembrance ~ Giving God the Glory ~ Part 2

It has always been my belief that the word “remember” is one of the most important words we have in Christendom.  Before there was the written word, men used to pass down from father to son, the history and spiritual dealings of God with man.  This very act of telling the stories over and over required a great deal of remembering or memory.

Why is remembering so important?  Well, without it, we wouldn’t have known about Adam’s experience in the Garden and his walk with God before he was cast out.  Adam was a living witness of God.  He had walked and talked with Him.  God shared with Adam his plan of Salvation and gave him and Eve a choice.

After Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, they didn’t forget about their lives with God in the Garden.  In fact, having lived and walked with God in the Garden, they remembered what it was like to live in His presence and they shared their experiences with their descendants.  Remembering these things helped them stay faithful through the consequences of their choice to partake of the fruit.  Being cast out of God’s presence brought with it the pain of the realization of what partaking the fruit ultimately meant: separation from God; but it also gave them hope, because God told them that He had provided a way to have Adam, (and the rest of us,) come Home to Him through His perfect and most righteous Son, Jesus Christ.  Adam taught his descendants the reality of God from his own experiences and that His Son, Jesus Christ, would provide the means for us to return to God, our Father.   This great truth was taught from father to son, down through the generations with the fulfillment of these truths revealed in the “meridian of time” with the birth of the Savior, His life and His eventual atonement and subsequent crucifixion on the cross.  During of the next 2000 years, the story of God the Father and Jesus Christ, was again repeated down through the generations.

Men died proclaiming His name because they remembered.

Here in the 21^st century, we continue to carry the banner to remember.

We remember that God proclaimed His Son as the propitiation for Adam’s transgressions all the way down through the generations to this day.

We remember the life of the Son:

His compassion, His teaching, His love for others, His patience, His Grace under pressure, and His magnificent stature of Righteousness.

We remember the death of the Son:

His long suffering with His friends who turned on Him, His patience in suffering, His breathtaking pain in the Garden of Gethsemane, His slow walk under the weight of the cross, His silence as they crowned Him with thorns and mocked Him as King, His endurance as they drove nails through His hands and wrists, and His forgiveness of those who least deserved it.

Yes, we are to remember; having taken His name upon us through baptism, we covenant to ALWAYS remember Him.

He reminded us in Matt 25:40 that:

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 

And so, we have covenanted to remember,

~that when we interact with those around us, we are interacting with the Savior

~that we will bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light

~that we will mourn with those that mourn

~that we will comfort those that stand in need of comfort

~that when we are in the service of our fellow man or woman, that we are in the service of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and God the Father and,

~that we will stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that we may be redeemed of God

This, then, is how we bring glory to God in our daily lives: we remember Him and our covenant with Him through our service to others.  We are his hands.  We are His heart.  We are His servants.

In this act of remembering and doing, we bring glory and honor to God in our daily living.

I had lunch the other day with a friend of mine. We were talking about this and that when the conversation took a more spiritual tone.  I marveled at my friends’ faith as she sat there and shared with me her feelings about how she arrived at her faith in God.   She was telling me how her faith was born out of the trials she has had, and she said that she doesn’t worry about the stuff that doesn’t matter anymore.  She then made this comment:

“I don’t wake up every morning thinking ‘What can I do for Ruth Ann today, (name is changed), …  no, I think, what can I do to bring God the glory today?’”

My attention was riveted to what she was saying.  I listened carefully as she spoke for her to answer her own question:  What can I do to bring glory to God today? but, she just kept going as if what she said was a common every day occurrence and she probably assumes everyone thinks that way.  Certainly, the Lord knows I don’t wake up that way…but I probably should.  I waited and listened, but she never did answer the question directly, and long after the lunch was done and the day over, I was still affected by what she had said.

What does it mean to give “God the Glory” in our every waking moment? How is this accomplished?  What do I need to do in my life to “give God the Glory?”  These were questions that occupied the thoughts of my heart and my scripture studies over the next few days.

In so doing, I remembered the scripture in Psalms 118:24,

This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

How do we rejoice in the day the Lord has made?

The Lord says in a book called Moses 1:39, from the Latter-day scripture, The Pearl of Great Price,

This is my work and my Glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Purify my heart before Thee, O Lord…

Every week, during our worship services, we partake of the holy Sacrament.  An ordinance where we partake of the bread and water to renew our baptismal covenant with the Lord.  In Luke 22:19, the Lord says, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me and in verse 20 He continues, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

Likewise, in the Book of Mormon, we are taught in detail what this covenant to remember the Savior means,

And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;

 Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—

 Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you? (Alma 18:8-10).

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, our Sacrament prayers, said every week before we partake, renew this baptismal covenant to “remember.”

For the bread:

O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it, that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given them; that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.

For the water:

O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this wine to the souls of all those who drink of it, that they may do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them; that they may witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they do always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.

The key word in all of these scriptures is “remember.”

The covenant is clear: Partake of the emblems of my body and blood to remember and to testify in and through your daily living that you do indeed remember and follow the Savior.

This daily “remembrance” is how we bring “Glory to God”…

Part 2 to follow….