Refined and Purified

When my daughter was 12, she said to me, “Mommy, every time I try to make cookies, they always turn our yucky! They are terrible!” So, I proceeded to ask her about what she was doing when she made these cookies. What recipe did she have? Did she read it through before she started to make the cookies? Did she have all the ingredients? Did she have the right ingredients? Did she follow the recipe exactly?

She went on to tell me that she had done everything that she was supposed to do and it just did not turn out. “My cookies are like rubber!” she cried out in frustration. Although there are some recipes that you can get away with altering a little, many are not as forgiving, especially in baking.  Well, we were never quite able to figure out what happened that made her cookies turn out “like rubber,” but she was beginning to learn that baking, like many things in life, require one to follow a prescribed method in order to achieve the desired results.  We are tempted at times, when things are just slightly off,  to say, “oh that’s okay, I can live with that.” However, we fail to realize that, that one little change can alter the whole outcome.

I see a lot of parallel between these life experiences and obedience to God. Although I don’t think of obedience as a science, I do feel many of the principles between the two are similar. For example, the desired outcome of obedience is perfection and getting the desired results takes time, practice and patience.

This principle I am talking about is best illustrated in a talk I heard by Dieter Uchtdorf a few years ago.*

For my purposes, I will share a story from it:

In 1979 a large passenger jet with 257 people on board left New Zealand for a sightseeing flight to Antarctica and back. Unknown to the pilots, however, someone had modified the flight coordinates by a mere two degrees. This error placed the aircraft 28 miles (45 km) to the east of where the pilots assumed they were. As they approached Antarctica, the pilots descended to a lower altitude to give the passengers a better look at the landscape. Although both were experienced pilots, neither had made this particular flight before, and they had no way of knowing that the incorrect coordinates had placed them directly in the path of Mount Erebus, an active volcano that rises from the frozen landscape to a height of more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m).

As the pilots flew onward, the white of the snow and ice covering the volcano blended with the white of the clouds above, making it appear as though they were flying over flat ground. By the time the instruments sounded the warning that the ground was rising fast toward them, it was too late. The airplane crashed into the side of the volcano, killing everyone on board.

It was a terrible tragedy brought on by a minor error—a matter of only a few degrees. 

Further into his remarks he makes this correlation:

Suppose you were to take off from an airport at the equator, intending to circumnavigate the globe, but your course was off by just one degree. By the time you returned to the same longitude, how far off course would you be? A few miles? A hundred miles? The answer might surprise you. An error of only one degree would put you almost 500 miles (800 km) off course, or one hour of flight for a jet.

No one wants his life to end in tragedy. But all too often, like the pilots and passengers of the sightseeing flight, we set out on what we hope will be an exciting journey only to realize too late that an error of a few degrees has set us on a course for spiritual disaster.

Like Kati and her cookies or like the pilot in the story, our lives revolve around the day-to-day decisions we make.  Some have small consequences, and others, like the pilots, have disastrous ones.  So the question begs to be asked, “How do we keep ourselves from making decisions that land us places that we don’t want to be?”

Obviously, this whole blog could center on this theme, but for my purposes, I will just focus on one little portion of my experience that has led me to a small understanding of obedience and decision making.

My life has been fraught with decisions I have made that I have found myself later feverishly trying to clean up the messes. Good grief! What I have done to myself because of my decisions!?  But, what I did then means nothing when I compare what I had to do to “clean up” my “act.”

To say the least, my life has been challenging. I fully acknowledge that it has been so because of the decisions I made. The resulting consequences led me to much self-deprecation and misunderstanding about my worth as a child of God.  Eventually, through much effort, I came to see that it was my willfulness in wanting to do things “my way” which led to my pockmarked life.

It is hard to be honest with ourselves.

It is hard to face the reality that we have made decisions that have landed us somewhere where we really don’t want to be.  This is where I found myself when I finally let the following scripture sink into my soul:

And, finding there was greater happiness and peace and rest for me, I sought for the blessings of the fathers, and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same; having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possessed great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to be a father of many nations, a prince of peace, and desiring to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, I became a rightful heir, a High Priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers. –Abraham 1:2

This hit me like a rock. Abraham was a follower of righteousness and he desired in his life to be a greater follower of righteousness. Oh that I might be filled with this desire wherein I yearned for greater righteousness and obedience in my life! I loved reading the following quote in relation to this yearning:

“Desire is a particle of faith that develops within us as we experience divine truth.   It is like spiritual photosynthesis. The influence of the Holy Ghost, acting on the           Light of Christ within every human being, produces the spiritual equivalent of a             chemical reaction—a stirring, a change of heart, or a desire to know. Kevin Pearson, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ General Conference, April 2009.

Spiritual Photosynthesis ~ I love this analogy!

These thoughts slowly permeated through the rocky crevices of my heart and soul and I began to feel the same desire. Knowing my life was not where I wanted it to be, and believing for a very long time that I had completely messed it up, I wanted to “switch course” and make my final destination where it should be instead of where it was headed. I pondered over this scripture for a very long time.  While doing so, I also made it a matter of prayer, “help me to desire greater righteousness in my life.”

This query eventually led me to another scripture:

That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness. D&C 121:36

Wow!!! The powers of Heaven cannot be controlled nor handled ONLY upon the principles of righteousness! As you can imagine, my heart and mind were stirred to greater activity as I began to contemplate these things.

What does it mean to be righteous?

What part does obedience play in the pursuit of righteousness?

Is faith a key activator in the pursuit of obedience and righteousness?

Ultimately, I found myself asking this question:  What does it mean to be righteous enough to activate the powers of Heaven?

I found an answer to these questions in several places.

From Bruce R McConkie:

“Faith is a gift of God bestowed as a reward for personal righteousness. It is always given when righteousness is present and, the greater the measure of obedience to God’s laws, the greater will be the endowment of faith” (Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. [1966], 264).

From General Conference

“Desire, hope, and belief are forms of faith, but faith as a principle of power comes from a consistent pattern of obedient behavior and attitudes. Personal righteousness is a choice. Faith is a gift from God, and one possessed of it can receive enormous spiritual power.”   Kevin Pearson, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ General Conference, April 2009.

In the Doctrine & Covenants we learn:

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations                     of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— And when we                       obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon                              which it is predicated. (D&C 130:20-21)

I have concluded that faith unto obedience is first in the pursuit of personal righteousness.  Our faith is implemented by our desire to do right. Because these feelings “swell” in our breasts, our desires for greater obedience are activated and righteousness will then most certainly follow as we pursue a course pleasing to and in line with our Heavenly Father’s Will.

Kati has since grown up into a lovely young woman who is very proficient in the kitchen. She has learned to follow the recipes and as a result, come up with perfect results.

If only life could be so easy!! Living a life making the right decisions all the time is not quite so simple when everything is factored in, but we can greatly minimize disastrous results by keeping our eye “on the mark,” even Jesus Christ.  Strict obedience and submission are two of the keys to obtaining the end result of righteous living and the eventual prize of living with our Heavenly Father and His Son.  We want to carefully consider the Savior’s promise: “If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me” (Moroni 7:33). I am learning the fulfillment of this promise by degrees and I am ever grateful for His constant show of patience with me as I try to keep my life on track through faith and obedience.

*Dieter Uchtdorf: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2008/04/a-matter-of-a-few-degrees?lang=eng

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

During my teenage years, my mother lived in a house that was on the beach in Florida. When we were teenagers, and visiting my mother, my sister and I were out swimming one day in the ocean and when we looked up, we noticed that it was raining over my mother’s house. I thought it was hysterical that it was raining on her house while just 500 feet away, we were swimming in sunshine! I remember wondering if the fact that it was raining over her house meant “something.”

Many years later, I also lived in Florida. I was married and had 4 children. When my children were quite young, I liked to find fun things to do with them among the ordinary ins and outs of daily life. Since we lived in Florida, I noticed (and remembered) with interest that on occasion, you could be in one spot in the area, but in another spot, not so far away, you could see that it was raining. One day, this interesting phenomenon presented itself to all of us while we were in the car, and I said to my children, “Let’s go chase the rain.” They were curious to understand what I was talking about, so I pointed out the rain to them that was falling in the distance. I told them, “Let’s go find out where it is falling,” and off we went. It was like a scavenger hunt as we drove around that day taking a left here and a right there not caring where we ended up. Soon, without too much difficulty and with much satisfaction, we found and entered the rain storm that we had spotted a few miles away. We all laughed and had fun that we had “found the rain.” We made a wonderful memory that day.  While there are many implications you could gather from this story, there is one that means the most to me: Memories are timeless treasures of the heart. They are all we can take with us from moment to moment in our lives.

Years after that experience of chasing the rain with my children, my marriage had been dissolved and the custody of my children awarded to my ex-husband, I found myself in alone in New York City attending cooking school. The memory of separation from my children was painful and sharp and relentless, but I had to carry on. One day, while riding on the subway, I noticed a woman behaving badly with her child and I thought to myself, “Lady, if something happened to your child tonight and tomorrow she was gone, would you look back and regret what you had done with your child today?” I was all too aware of the answer to this question.
This is an interesting question and one that has been formed on many lips throughout the ages. It usually begins with, “if only,” and is often accompanied by a tragic experience. “if only I had said ‘I love you,’”…”if only I hadn’t said, __________________ “(fill in the blank)…if only…if only…if only…you know what I mean. All of us have said it in one way or another.

Regret is a paralyzing emotion. We look back on our lives and regret this or that. Because of guilt, we emotionally “flog” ourselves into believing we are no good. Certainly, regret causes much sorrow in our lives. However, when we take the opportunities to learn from others, regret doesn’t have quite the painful sting as it would otherwise. I would long remember the lesson I learned from that woman in the train station that day and the way she treated her child. The lesson I learned was timeless: life is short and offers no glimpse in to the future. We cannot change the past; we can only influence the future by what we do in the present.

This was a huge lesson.

As painful as my life was without my children, it would be infinitely more painful if the only thing they remembered about their mother when they were with her, was that she was angry and bitter about the “hand” she’d been dealt. Therefore, I determined that if I would “stand fast in the Lord” (See Philippians 4:1) and wait upon the Lord, trusting Him to give me the strength to go on and be supported by His gracious hand, I would be able to run and not be weary and walk and not faint. (See Isaiah 40:31; Psalms 37:7; Proverbs 3:5-6).

I have never been able to reconcile the outcome of my life without my children. In this, I have had to walk by faith. I have had to learn that some things will never be understood in this life. In this painful and often bitter time of my life, I needed to learn to trust in the Lord; To rest in Him; To let go of the control of everything and let Him work His marvelous work. This has not been easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I can testify with the assuredness of my soul that He have never, ever let go of me in my lonely path. He allowed me to feel the pain of separation from my children. He allowed me to experience all that was necessary to achieve my ultimate goal of becoming like Him. It has been the most difficult thing I have had to endure in my life and I am still not sure whether I will pass “the test.” He is gracious and good and all I am today is because He never gave up on me and my ability to endure with His help.

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….