I bent my knee today to Thee,
And You listened very carefully.
My heart split open,
And You could see
One still worthy of her destiny.
I marvelled how quick
You wiped my slate so clean
And so gently said to me:
I understand your mortal suffering,
I met you in Gethsemane.
- Cathryne Allen
“We need mercy.
Whether it is because of our “weakness and liability to sin” or for the trials
we are called to pass through, we need the tempering mercy of God to sustain
us. Both our weaknesses and our trials bring suffering, which are ameliorated
by the compassion of God himself.
“A 1986 Guideposts magazine contains the story of a
woman who discovered what she called “the nevertheless principle”. She had been
facing a difficult experience with her husband’s having a malignant brain
tumor. She said that in the midst of the experience, at a moment of her
greatest pleading, God granted her a word in a moment of inspiration. This
single word was nevertheless:
“I knew it had to be a special word, though I didn’t
yet know it would become a life-style. I was sure only that it was a kind of
promise. It was even a powerful little phrase: never the less.
“Never the less with God, no matter what. Always the
most….Though doctors pronounced Jerry incurable, nevertheless, he would be
gloriously healed. Perhaps not here on earth as we had all prayed. If Jerry’s
physical body should die, nevertheless, he would go on living in another,
greater dimension. (Marion Bond West, “One Simple Word from God”, p 12).
“The woman began researching this word in her Bible,
finding it 90 times. Her story, simple but intriguing, has potential to lead
any of us to the scriptures to find the “nevertheless” verses…..”nevertheless”
verses in the scriptures quite often direct our attention to God’s mercy, such
as:
“For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least
degree of allowance: Nevertheless, he that repents and does the commandments of
the Lord shall be forgiven (D&C 1:31-32)
“If the Lord could not look upon sin with the least
degree of allowance, ‘period’ or ‘exclamation point’, then all of us would be
lost. But since that scripture uses a semicolon, along with that merciful word nevertheless,
you and I have hope, born of God’s mercy.” (Jerry A. Wilson, The Great Plan of
Happiness-Insights from the lectures on Faith, p 39-40)
I had a memory from my pre-earth life some years ago.
I was sitting with the Saviour and He was saying to me: “I will save you and I
will make up for everything.”
I think what He meant by the ‘making-up process’ is
this: You will go through some tough spots and you will have to endure them but
when you are alone, I will send you people who care; when you need
understanding to help you cope, I will send you the Holy Ghost to teach you;
when you need somewhere to lay down your head, I will provide a shelter for
you. You will be hurting, you will be impoverished, you will be sick, nevertheless
I will always be there…..this is mercy.
I can testify that this has come true for me. Over the
years of my difficult life, I have lacked for nothing: I have been provided
with friends that became my family, a network of help from the Church, anything
I have lacked has come to me from different sources…..furniture, car,
utilities, homes….never the less, always the most…..
There is none like Thee,
My Saviour and my King,
Showing mercy and kindness
To someone insignificant like me.
Who can compare and who can equal Thee
In Thy merciful care of me?
Let me worship Thee
With my lips and my heart
And help me be steadfast
From Thy favour never to part.
- Cathryne Allen
Mercy has
been one of the Saviour’s attributes I thought I understood well. Not until
recently did I realise I only understood it partially.
I have for
a while now been praying for mercy regarding my illness. I have wanted a
healing. There have been days when I felt the absence of it acutely and I am
ashamed to admit with that absence came disbelief of God’s love. I could simply
not understand it. I thought I qualified even just for a fraction of the ample mercy
we are told is ever at the Saviour’s disposal to give.
As I
reflected on this phenomenon recently I thought there must be something I was missing and
there certainly was. It was given to me to see clearly that mercy cannot be
given on demand, otherwise it is not mercy. Mercy comes from one who is
merciful to give. It cannot be manipulated, demanded, expected, or even earned.
It comes from the Saviour’s merciful heart and therefore it comes on His terms.
Saviour’s mercy is a gift that should be trusted in but when and how it is
offered is up to Him.
Our part in
receiving mercy is trust. Because mercy is usually given as a form of relief
but if that relief was given us prematurely, it could jeopardize our growth and
learning. Consider the multi-faceted answers to our prayers and you will see
how complex deliverance of mercy can be:
”If all the sick for whom we pray were healed,
if all the righteous were protected and the wicked destroyed, the whole program
of the Father would be annulled and the basic principle of the gospel, free
agency, would be ended. No man would have to live by faith.
“If joy and peace and rewards were
instantaneously given the doer of good, there would be no evil – all would do
good but not because of the rightness of doing good. There would be no test of
strength, no development of character, no growth of powers, no free agency,
only satanic controls. Should all prayers be immediately answered according to our
desires and our limited understanding, then there would be little or no
suffering, sorrow, disappointment, or even death, and if these were not, there
would also be no joy, success, resurrection, nor eternal life and godhood.” (President
Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle, p 97).
Enduring something difficult when a promise of
mercy has been given but is not forthcoming is not for faint hearted. Trusting someone
we do not see or something we have no proof of is a hard doctrine. We live by
sight in this world and we often fail in our faith. I have often wondered how
the Saviour can be so restrained and so tolerant of us when we lack in our
faith in Him and then I came across this scripture which helped me to understand:
“I am Jehovah, and I know the end from the
beginning, therefore my hand shall be over thee” (Abraham 2:8)
Notice
how He did not say, “I know all things from beginning to the end”. Instead He
said it the other way around. He said, “I know THE END”. In other words, I know
how this is going to end up. I know the end product of YOU. I can be tolerant
with you and what you are going through because I know the end.
The
Saviour is not so concerned about where we have been but He focuses on the
direction we are facing and where that direction will help us end up. For that
good He reserves His mercy for the times and events in our lives that will be
profitable for that end. His main concern is our eternal well-being and what we
will become. This concern overrides the comfort and ease we expect in this
life. He is ever driven by the work He shares with the Father to “bring to pass
the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39)
“He wept – He who had descended below all things, the Man
of Sorrows, He who bore all our griefs. The heights of His infinite capacity
for joy is the inverse, mirror image of the depth of His capacity to bear our
burdens.
“So it is with the enlarged caverns of feeling within
our own hearts; as the sorrows of our lives carve and stretch those caverns,
they expand our soul’s capacity for joy. Then, when the Man of Sorrows turns
our bitter tastes to sweet, our joy – and His – will fill the widened chambers
of our hearts with what the scriptures call ‘fulness’. That is when we have
accepted His Atonement and love with such completeness that His purpose for us
is fully satisfied.
“Then will we know that we were made for this. Then
will we know where, and why, and to whom, we belong. “For He satisfieth the
longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with gladness (Psalm 107:9).
- Bruce C. Hafen, “The Belonging Heart”, p 315)
KAHLIL GIBRAN ON JOY AND SORROW:
Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame
well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves
into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that
was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit
the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you
shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and
you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your
delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow”, and others
say, “Nay, sorrow is greater.” But I say to you, they are inseparable. Together
they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the
other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily, you are suspended like scales between your
sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and
balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold
and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise to fall.
-
Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet – A Timeless
Masterpiece”
Thou
art our everlasting God
Jehovah,
our King,
Who
has loved us and chosen us as Thine own;
Keep
us as the apple of Thine eye,
Hide
us under the shadow of Thy wings
That
we might never stray
And
cause Thee sorrow;
And
help us wait for Thee
In
the dawning of tomorrow.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
The prophet
Jeremiah preached to the Kingdom of Judah for 40 years attempting to avert the
impending captivity that eventually left Judah's land desolate. So steeped in
sin and idolatry, Judah, like Ephraim and the 10 tribes, lost sight of the God
they once promised to worship and serve.
It would
seem they needed the experience of captivity to awaken them to their true God.
The 10 tribes came to their senses quickly and were led by the hand of the
Father into obscurity until such time that He would bring them back (3 Nephi
17:4). Judah on the other hand became a very zealous nation for its God whilst
in captivity to Babylon. They realised that the prophets were right all along
and that they needed to abandon image worship and return to the one true and
living God.
So zealous were
they in their devotion to Jehovah's law that they became slaves to the numerous
rules of conduct that went beyond the law itself. Out of this zeal different
religious factions were born such as Pharisees and Sadducees which ensured
strict observance to the overwhelming number of laws and rules that were
invented. Up until the Babylonian captivity, scriptures were only read on
special occasions and on the sabbath. Once Judah was taken into captivity this
changed and scriptures began to be taught to the general public on regular
basis by another factious group called scribes.
Over time
the Jews in Babylon began to adopt the language and culture of the Chaldeans
forgetting the Hebrew language. This necessitated the assistance of scribes who
read and interpreted the scriptures to them. "Through the years, each
religious group - scribes, Pharisses, Sadducees and others referred to the
written word, quoted it, enlarged upon it, interpreted it, and in other ways
continued to add to what their fathers had established. The commentaries,
explanations, interpretations, and inferences became known as ‘oral tradition’.
In time,
these traditions, written and oral, took on so much importance that they often
overshadowed the law and became a stumbling block for the Jews" (Old
Testament Student Manual, 1 Kings - Malachi, p. 262). This is the condition in
which the Saviour found the Jews when He made His appearance as the awaited and
promised Messiah.
Ezra, a scribe
and a captive in Babylon, was charged by the Persian king, following the
completion of the second temple, to teach the Jewish people in Jerusalem of the
law and then set up a judgment system for the lawbreakers (see Ezra 7:25-26).
Under King Artaxerxes
I (465-424 B.C.), Ezra and Nehemiah led the second wave of Jewish exiles back
to Jerusalem. Nehemiah, a royal cup bearer to the King, and a man of unselfish
patriotism and personal integrity assumed the position of Jerusalem’s governor.
Together with Ezra, a righteous and dedicated priest, they succeeded in
restoring and reviving a Jewish community in Jerusalem and effected great
reforms amongst the congregation.
The
spiritual reformation of Jerusalem became the first and greatest importance. During
the span of three generations between the first and second group of returned
exiles, many of the people including the priests and the Levites had
intermarried with people of different cultures and religions (Ezra 9:1,2). Ezra
was devastated to say the least when he learnt of this and offered a heart
rendering prayer to God for forgiveness of the direct violation of God’s
command against inter-marriage at the time of the entry into the promised land
(Ezra 9:6-15).
Inter-marriage carried a serious risk of idolatry and spiritual decay for God’s chosen people. So acute was Ezra’s awareness of this that in his grief he refused to eat, tore his clothes and cast himself down before the temple. Makes you want to weep and weep the people did before him acknowledging that they had trespassed against God and were willing to renew their covenant with Him by promising to put away their ‘strange’ wives (Ezra 10:1-16). As a woman who was a single mother for 20 years, I don’t know how I feel about this. I have always wondered what happened to those poor women and their children who were left husbandless in the worst time and place to be so.
The situation does make twos things obvious here: 1.There is a consequence
to pay for every sin and 2. Repentance comes at a high price. Either way, disobedience
is not worth it…..
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Artist Unknown)
Long ago,
When you lived in my arms
You wanted to fly
In the vast expanse of the skies.
I gifted you wings,
And promised I would
Teach you to fly.
Just remember, I am here, but
It is your turn now,
To rise.
-
Cathryne
Allen
