A LIFELINE OF GRACE

I was looking at my missionary photos yesterday and I got in touch with who I was back then. So young, so naïve, so inexperienced, so hopeful for the future. Life tends to knock that eagerness out of you, however, as you get older and live through heartache, hardship, trials, loss, sacrifice. I do love that clueless, inexperienced, young missionary I once was though. She made right choices even back then which brought me to this place I am in now.

There was a time in my life when I felt I had nothing to live for. It was thirty years ago. I had just divorced and I was hanging by a thread. I felt my life was in ruins. The emotional pain I was in was excruciating. I knew God was my only answer for survival. This is when the scriptures became my saving grace. I began to study them in depth, for hours at a time.

They who testified of Christ gave me strength to rise above the ashes of my life. I began to recover and to hope for 'life eternal because of my faith in him according to the promise' (Moroni 7:41). They renewed me because of Him who brings life to all that is dead and recovers all that is lost.

The more I studied the scriptures, the more my testimony of Christ grew because I was seeing Him on every page. In the Old Testament, I could see the merciful Jehovah who put up with the backsliding Israel; in the New Testament I could see a loving Saviour who gave all of himself to the undeserving; in the Book of Mormon, I saw the caring, resurrected Christ who never forgets His people; in the Doctrine and Covenants, I saw the majestic exalted God who prepares us for His return; in the Pearl of Great Price, I saw the pre-mortal Christ, the hope of all creation.

Seeing the Saviour so clearly in the scriptures gave me faith that He could restore me to wholeness. I began to see that my life was not over, that with Him by my side, I would survive and I would flourish.

God began to speak to me through the scriptures all those years ago. When I needed to hear Him loud and clear, I would allow the scriptures in my hands to open at a random page and see there exactly what I needed to know. To this day this is my favourite way of receiving answers.

Here is a story that proves my point:

“A man whose business was failing terribly and who was so deep in trouble was contemplating suicide. As a last resort he went to a priest who advised him to take a beach chair and a Bible to the water's edge, put the Bible on his lap, to open it and let the wind rifle the pages and when it rests on a page he should read the first words he sees. He assured him this will be his answer that will tell him what to do.

“A year later this same businessman went back to the priest in apparent affluence and success. The priest asked him if he did what he instructed him to do. The man assured him he did.

"You sat on a beach chair with the Bible in your lap?"

"Absolutely"

"You let the pages rifle until they stopped?"

"Absolutely"

"And what were the first words you saw?"

"Chapter II"

 

(Author Unknown)

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art by Liz Lemon Swindle)