THE BIRTH OF HOPE

 

 

Out of all my childhood memories, I cherish the ones of Easter the most. I was born and raised in Croatia. I was 13 when my family immigrated to Australia. What remains etched in my heart the most about the home of my birth is the land and its’ nature….every wheatfield I ran through, every tree I climbed, every patch of grass with blooming spring flowers……it is all so firmly locked in my memory.  

When I read the Bible, I know what harvests are and what seasonal festivals are and what shepherds are. And I understand many spiritual truths that were taught by the Saviour using the metaphors that related to agrarian way of life. I know it because I grew up with it.

Easter was a magical time in my youth. It was a time when the snow left and spring came. A time when baby chicks were born and violets emerged from the earth to herald a renewal of life. A time when my mother made me and my sisters new dresses to wear to Church Sunday morning with our Easter baskets laden with food for the priest to bless.

I cannot remember it ever raining on Easter Sunday. The sun shone always, like it wanted to remind us that it was a day of re-birth. It was a time when nature allowed me to see God’s glory.

 Easter Sundays for me overshadowed Good Friday and Christ’s death. As important as that was, Easter Sunday was what I remembered the most because the happiness and knowledge of Christ’s resurrection whispered in spring air.

Now that I am an adult and understand the hope of resurrection for myself, my heart is full of gratitude and hope for eternal life that was born at Calvary. I know that He lives and has overcome the sting of death for my sake. His suffering to make that possible is something I can never repay but the power He gained to exalt me on high is something I will be grateful for forever.

When You rose from Your grave

With healing in Your wings,

Did I live on in Your heart

As you ascended to Your throne

To seal my destiny?

Did You carry us all in Your bosom

With the crucible of the cross

Forever etched in Your memory?

 

Your gift, the beauty of this earth,

That we might always feel You near;

With every movement of the trees

And the rustle of its leaves,

I hear You whisper:

“I am here”

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Blossoms of Life by Greg Collins)

THE HUMILITY OF A KING

 

I have always wondered how the Saviour coped with trading the royal courts on high for the baseness of this earthly life.  I find the pictures of Palm Sunday confronting. Somehow, I prefer the Saviour to be seen in His majesty and power rather than on the loweliest animal of the earth heading to His death.

I want to see Him in all His power and glory as the Rock of Heaven (Moses 7:53)….as He will appear when He comes.  At the same time I am in awe of the magnitude of humility that was required of Him to lower himself to such a paltry acknowledgement of His kingly status when the magnitude of people acknowledged Him to be the son of David on His last entry into Jerusalem (Matt 21:9, 15)

The ass has been recognized as ‘the ancient symbol of Jewish royalty’ denoting that a king is the servant of the people hence the connection to humility (James E. Talmage, “Jesus the Christ” p 517). When Jesus entered Jerusalem that fateful Sunday He marked His hour of death. Another sign of humility -  He entered as the Prince of Peace rather than a King with a fanfare of trumpets ready for battle.

“Dismounting, He entered afoot the temple enclosure; shouts of adulation greeted Him there. Chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, the official representatives of the theocracy, the hierarchy of Judaism, were incensed; there was no denying the fact that the people were rendering Messianic honors to this troublesome Nazarene….” (James E. Talmage, “Jesus the Christ” p 516)

“The manner of His entry should have appealed to the learned teachers of the law and the prophets; for Zechariah’s impressive forecast….was frequently cited among them: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” (Zechariah 9:9)

And so no other nation on earth who would crucify their God (2 Nephi 10:3) accused Him of three crimes worthy of death: 1. They claimed that He was a sinner who wouldn’t conform to the rabbinical laws and traditions (Mark 7:1-9); 2. They proclaimed Him to  be the incarnation of Satan and that He performed His miracles by the power of Beelzebub (Matthew 12:24-27); 3. They accused Him of blasphemy in claiming equality with God, that He was the Son of God and that He WAS God (see John 8 amongst many others).

Even though He knew ‘to this end was He born and for this cause came He into the world’ I would still like to know with what heaviness of heart He sat upon that donkey….(John 18:37)

Did you miss

Your godly robes

That you traded for

The swaddling cloths of Calvary?

Was the ground rough beneath

Your feet as You traversed

The dusty roads of Galilee?

 

The baseness of This earth,

So willingly suffered despite hostility.

Yet, You came

The Father to reveal

And to Him forever

Our yielding hearts to seal.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Triumphant Entry by Liz lemon Swindle)

THE FAVOURED HOUSE

 

The plagues of Egypt were brutal. I have never before considered the devastating effects they had on its citizens. The Old Testament doesn’t take this aspect of the plagues into consideration. It only highlights that the Egyptians were eager by the end of the ordeal to send the Hebrews ‘out of the land in haste’ lest they all die (Exodus 12:33)

Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian, took liberty to elaborate on the more realistic picture of the disaster of the time during which many people died. It horrified me reading it. Consider that they had no spring water and they were forced to drink of the bloody river, the land was full of  ‘pestilential creatures’ such as never had been seen before, the boils and blains and the three days of intense darkness killed many due to lack of air, and of course the worst was the death of all the first born, including the cattle so their food supply was greatly diminished for those who survived (Josephus, “Jewish Antiquities Book 2, Chapter 14). Egypt was just about destroyed.

I know some people don’t like the Old Testament because God comes across as a vengeful God. When you consider the Flood and all the wars God’s people have waged with His help, it can seem so. God somehow seems almost biased towards one group of people at the expense of all others.  Consider His expressions of love and devotion: He considers Israel to be ‘the apple of His eye’ (Deut 32:9,10; Zechariah 2:8; Psalm 17:18)….and His treasure and jewels (Exodus 19:5; 28:17-21; Malachi 3:17; D&C 60:4; 101:3).

This is what I see in the Old Testament. I have always seen in it the merciful Jehovah because of  His perpetual forgiveness and support of the backsliding Israel but I believe it had to be so because It was a time when the establishment of the House of Israel was taking place. It was a time when the Abrahamic covenant had to be grounded for the peculiar and favoured people of God to be built and stabilized because this group of people is where the salvation of the human family resides. Whether you are born into it or adopted into it, you have to belong to it to be saved.

God’s favouritism of the House of Israel is extensive in the scriptures and most people of the world don’t understand it or see it. Consider just a few: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people…and this is why: that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darknesss into His marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9).

Most people prefer the New Testament to the Old because it portrays a loving God. I get it, Jesus was all about love, a love that took Him to the cross. The interesting thing is that Jesus didn’t come to earth to minister to the world. He came to minister to the favoured but apostate House, to bring back in His words, ‘the lost sheep of Israel’ (Matthew 15:24; 3 Nephi 15:19-23). The Gospel was not taken to the rest of the world until after his death.

He came to the Israelites because to them pertains “the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises (Romans 9:4). The House needed the establishment of His Church to receive the covenants and to engage in the service to bless the human family of the earth….to fulfil the Abrahamic covenant.  He came as the Shepherd to teach the under-shepherds how to rescue the sheep…..We are favoured because we are the believers and because we are the workers.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Return to the Fold By Greg Sargent)

  

MORTALITY

 

"On my way to visit the Jameses the other evening, I saw a wheat field that appeared to be greener and taller than the others. Thinking about it for a while, I concluded that occasionally some loving farmer drives over the field with his tractor and dumps manure all over it. I thought, "My, it's just like life. Here we are minding our own business, growing our little hearts out. We're really quite green, somewhat productive and very sincere. When out of the blue, life deals us a dirty one, and we're up to our eyebrows in manure. We, of course, conclude that life as we have known it has just ended and will never be the same again. But one day, when the smell and the shock are gone we find ourselves greener and more productive than we have ever been! Unfortunately, no matter how often we go through these growing experiences, we are never able to appreciate the sound of the tractor or the smell of the manure."

- Harold W. Wood

 

My mortality spreads before me day and night,

I wince at bearing this heavy load.

I stumble and I fall,

The darkness seeking to swallow me whole.

I know He waits at heaven’s gate

Till I have learnt to walk the rough domain;

I will hurry, I will run

I will grasp the heaven’s hand

That will lift me to His arms

Forever there to remain.

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art by Ivan Guaderrama)

THE GREAT DELIVERER

 

 

There is something very interesting about the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt. The Lord knew from the beginning that this mammoth undertaking was going to have incredible difficulties from the start and I believe He used it to His advantage to impress upon the children of Israel that He was the great deliverer who gathers His own and that Moses was only an instrument in His hands.

 

Thus He instructed Moses to tell them this:  "I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments: And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.  And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD. (Exodus 6:6-8)

 

And He didn’t stop at this. He went on to say: “And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord” (Exodus 7:5). His efforts to help humanity know that He is the fountain of all salvation is incredibly prominent in the scriptures. Once I counted His oft repeated declaration of “ye shall know that I am the Lord” in the book of Ezekiel alone which came to 32 times and 25 times of the same statement in reference to other nations than the House of Israel. I kept a list of all the scriptural references. I find His inexhaustible efforts to impress this upon us amazing. But I digress….

 

The first time that Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh didn’t go so well. The Pharaoh increased the Hebrews’ burdens and in one fell swoop destroyed their initial hope of deliverance which immediately made them accuse Moses and Aaron of wanting to kill them (Exodus 4:31; 5:20,21).

 

This lack of faith snowballed to Moses who went back to the Lord to complain and ask where the deliverance was that was promised (5:22,23). He then pointed out to the Lord again, as he did in Midian, that he was of ‘slow speech’ so how can Pharaoh believe and obey him? (Exodus 6:12,30) This, after he was apprised of the difficulty of the mission before he left Midian, all the assurances he was given of its eventual success and despite having a spokesman and the heads of the tribes accompany him to the Egyptian court (6:14-27).

 

Sometimes I don’t know who I feel more sorry for….us and our backsliding faith or the Lord and His continual necessity to carry us in our frustrating humanity. His mercy, tolerance and patience in impressing upon us that with Him nothing is impossible astounds me.

 

As the sun bursts through the morning light

It reveals You in the depths of my heart.

Gratitude overwhelms me

For Thy enduring patience

Of my inconsistent delight;

My erratic trust,

My feeble faith in Thy might.

I marvel You wait

In the shadow of my stubborn heart

And reach out to me in mercy to fulfil Thy part.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: With God Nothing is Impossible by Greg Collins)

TO BECOME

 

When Moses was issued his calling as the deliverer of Israel his feeling of inadequacy reared its head. This was no calling to serve on the Bishopric or to be an Elders Quorum President. This calling was beyond huge. Some historians have estimated that the population of the Hebrews in Egypt could have numbered in the excess of 2 million people. Moses tried three times to convince God that calling him to do it was not a good idea.

When an Egyptian prince Moses had “few equals as a general of the armies” (Josephus, “The Complete Works of Josephus”, p 119). Since that time he had been a Hebrew slave and a shepherd of Midian for 40 years. Somehow one can understand his reply to God: “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). This was the first attempt.

Jehovah assured Moses that He will be with him and then proceeded to prove it. He foretold the success of this task and that because of it  Moses would serve Him on Mt Sinai after the exodus; he told him how to convince the Hebrews that He, Jehovah, indeed sent him by revealing His name; that Pharaoh will not let the people go and that He will smite Egypt with His wonders and that when they finally leave, they will take the spoils of Egypt with them (Exodus 3:11-22)

Then came the second attempt. All of the Saviour’s foreknowledge still was not enough for Moses and he tried to ‘assure’ God that Egyptians will not believe him that God sent him (Exodus 4:1). Next came the visual proofs as the way of evidence: the leprous hand, the rod that turns into a snake and the water of the river that turns into blood (vs 2-9)

Finally the third…..”I am not eloquent but am slow of speech” (4:10). Whether Moses had lost confidence in himself over the years or not, the fact remained that he was once “an extremely well-educated prince and a mighty warrior in the cause of the Egyptians (Josephus, “Antiquities” book 2, 9:7, 10:1-2). Stephen affirmed that Moses was ‘learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds (Acts 7:22).

The Lord assured Moses again that He will be with him and with ‘his mouth and will teach him what he should say’ but even this was not good enough and Moses asked for a spokesman and angered the Lord who relented and gave him Aaron as his spokesman (Exodus 4:10-14). Looking for help in ‘arm of the flesh’  was not a good idea, it was a gross offence.

This is the reality of the matter. Jehovah didn’t try to build-up Moses by recounting all his successes. He didn’t pamper to his inadequacies with sympathy and pity. He got angry….and He got angry not because Moses didn’t believe in himself but because he didn’t believe in HIM!

I think He was so astounded by Moses’ lack of faith that he chided him with the reminder of who He was: “Who hath made man’s mouth? Or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord?” (v 11). I hope Moses was shaking in his boots by then.

Another reality…..the Saviour doesn’t really need any of us. He can do His own work and accomplish things through His mighty miracles and the power of His priesthood…..but where would that leave us mere mortals? Dumb, blind, and inexperienced…..

We are in training here and as Joseph said, “on the pathway to eternal fame, and immortal glory”….and there is only one person who can help us rise to such a lofty ideal. He can make of us what we came here to become…..we should never forget that. In other words, ‘I know you cannot do this on your own but with me you can do anything!’

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: The Rock of Our Salvation by Jay Bryant Ward)

LIFE

 

“’Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect’ (Matt 5:48). Now, that is an attainable goal. We will not be exalted, we shall not reach our destination, unless we are perfect, and now is the best time in the world to start toward that perfection. I have little patience with people who say, ‘Oh, nobody is perfect’, the implication being: ‘so why try? Of course no one is wholly perfect, but we find some who are a long way up the ladder.”

-          President Spencer W. Kimball, “Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball” p 165

I have been very introspective on this the last leg of my earthly journey. I think illness has a great way of forcing us to confront our mortality. Recognizing that life is a sum of one’s choices, I have been re-hashing my life to discover if there is something I should have done better: did I follow all the teachings of the Gospel as I should, did I rely on God enough to follow my life’s plan, did I allow my fears to control me, did  my decisions make my life better or worse, did I suffer more than I should have, did I try hard enough to be Christ-like?

So much of what comes upon us is self-inflicted. Even Job admitted that what he feared had come upon him (Job 3:25).  I discovered a person can easily run the risk of spending their entire old age beating themselves up over the past. Seeing clearly you are not perfect can be a terrible blow to the ego….

I have looked back on the lessons I have learnt during my life and have reasoned they are wasted if they are not acted upon but some things cannot be re-visited. Somehow I think nothing gained here was ever meant to be wasted. There is another life to be lived….a better life….the real life….the never ending life…..because the spirit of man lives on and ‘becoming’ is a process.

One day we will see the beauty in all our earthly experiences and all our learning as we kneel before the King of Kings and acknowledge His priceless part in our eternal journey. One day I know, when I am sanctified, He will consecrate ‘the sum of me’.

The lessons of my life flowed like a river

Winding through days, months and years;

I rescued a few but missed so many

From the currents as I saw them passing;

They drowned in a daze of my ignorance,

Unwanted and ignored but yet abiding.

I fish them now from the pool of my memory

And give them life everlasting.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(Art: Jesus Prince of Peace by Danny Hahlbohm)