My heart overflows with gratitude
For my darkest nights
Because they bring You to me
Flowing like a river with its strongest might.
I bask in Your presence,
I surrender my soul,
I am grounded in Your strength
I am strong enough to carry on.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Jesus the Symbol of Hope by Ivan Guaderrama)
“God’s love,
understood as His desire for a relationship with us, is unconditional. In fact,
God commands all men and women everywhere to repent and come to Him (3 Nephi
11:32). He desires to redeem us, to glorify and exalt us equally and
unconditionally. Does God desire to have an eternal relationship with all His
children? Yes, and in this sense God’s love is unconditional. ‘All are invited,
none is excluded.’ But it takes two people to have a relationship.
“A
relationship by definition, requires two points of reference, and only some of
God’s children love Him back and agree to enter into the desired relationship.
He does not initially love them any more than others, but in time the
relationship of love that is possible with them is much, much greater than it
is with those who reject Him. They ‘abide in His love’ (John 15:10)
“Many of
God’s children will not love Him. They will not accept the proposal of the
Bridegroom, though He loves them dearly. They will never experience the joy the
gospel marriage brings. However, that is not because God is unwilling or
because they failed to meet conditions that would have rendered Him willing. It
is because they will not accept His proposal; they will not come to the
wedding. Though He loved them first, they did not love Him back, and by their
choice the relationship will not be as great as it might have been – they refuse
to ‘abide in His love’.” (Stepehen R.
Robinson, Following Christ, 149-150)
A few years
ago I wrote a post on Facebook saying that God the Father loves His Son the
most out of all His children. One reader was enraged. He claimed that God is
perfect and has the ability to love all his children equally. He said he would
be devastated if his children thought he had a favourite. I was, on the other
hand, astounded that he would consider himself on equal grounds in Father’s
esteem with the Saviour of the world and was in his sinful state deserving of
the same love. In my view, the Saviour deserves that and even more.
Through my
study of the scriptures I have come to understand why the Saviour would be
loved the most:
-
He saved all the rest of the Father’s children through
His Atoning sacrifice and paved the way to eternal life for those who accept Him
(D&C 19:16-19).
-
His perfect and complete obedience: During His visit to
the Americas, The Saviour made 15 references of His obedience to the Father (3
Nephi 15: 14-16,18-19, 16:3,10,16; 17:2; 18:14,27; 20:10,14,46), including the reference
to the greatest act of obedience ever, that of being sent by the Father to the
cross (3 Nephi 27:13-14). In the meridian of time, He told his disciples: “I do
always those things that please Him” (John 8:29). How many of us can say this?
-
Nobody loves the Father more than Christ. This He
showed very clearly in pre-earth life when He volunteered to preserve His glory
and opposed Satan who sought to take it away (Moses 4:1-4). I don’t recall any
of us stepping up volunteering for this…….
-
Jesus was not only Father’s spirit child but His ONLY
mortal child hence the Father calls Him ‘The Only Begotten’ and ‘The Beloved
Son’….the references of which are too numerous to list.
-
Christ was and is the most righteous of all Father’s
children and ‘he that is righteous is FAVOURED of God’ (1 Nephi 17:35).
-
And finally…..Mormon called the Son of the Father ‘His
MOST beloved’ (Mormon 5:14).
A female
reader attempted to support the man who challenged my Facebook post and said
that the Father loves ALL His children. I asked her if He loves Satan too considering
that God cannot love evil which Satan has become and through his evil has
destroyed many of Father’s children as opposed to Christ who has saved us all.
She answered ‘yes’. Some of us are deluded beyond recognition…..
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Father and Son by Danny Hahlbohm)
I hear Your voice in empty silence
When loneliness envelops me;
I hear Your voice in violent storms
That plague Me in mortality;
I hear Your voice in my struggles
That never let me be;
I hear Your voice when You pilot me
On dangerous journeys of earthly seas;
I hear Your voice beckoning me
To stay the course because
You will never abandon me.
I hear Your voice getting closer
And more distinct on the narrow path
That leads me home to Thee.
I see Your arms wide open
Waiting to welcome me.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Be Not Afraid by LDS Book Store)
Sometimes
we make such a mess of our lives that we have to admit it. The parable of the
Prodigal Son is the best example of this (see Luke 15). I see in this parable an
analogy that could apply to all of us.
To recap, a
man had two sons. Imagine you are the younger and you wanted to leave home and
make your own way in the world and perhaps sow some wild oats. You plan to part ways with your family so you
ask your father for your inheritance. The plan was to have some fun and even
gamble and maybe make some speculative investments to double your money. You
are sure there is an easier way to make it than your father tilling his fields.
The father
obliges and sends you out into the world. No doubt he can see that you could
learn a few lessons. Much like our Father in Heaven who had sent us down to
earth not just to learn a few lessons but to eventually become like Him and
enjoy the riches of eternity.
The older
brother in the Parable, the heir of all his father had, was pretty much of the
opinion that his brother deserved all the misfortune he got. This brother never sought him who was lost, despite
the kinship, despite the brotherhood, despite the father's sorrow over his
loss.
Our older brother, on the other hand, knowing from the beginning that He alone would inherit all the Father has, had a very different approach to the situation. Knowing that none of us could come back home by our own efforts, in essence said: ‘I will pave the way, I will seek them and I will bring them back.
So
you the prodigal, with your inheritance spent are now reduced to the lowest
form of poverty and misery that the world can offer. You find yourself sleeping
and eating the husks with the pigs in your service. Imagine
such degradation and suffering as eating and sleeping with pigs, especially for
one of an honorable parentage who was raised in wealth and was attended to by
servants.
Your
suffering is extreme, you can sink no lower. You reflect on the home of your
youth and the security and safety you had there and how well you were provided
for. If only you could go home to the Father who loved you! But you have no means to make your way back. And
you are in agony of remorse for what you have done. The guilt and shame is
consuming you.
And then,
the unthinkable happens. Your older brother finds you and tells you he will pay
for your way home and he will redeem you from all your debts and he will even
share his inheritance with you. There are some conditions that will have to be
met to ensure your return but you will be saved from the failure your life has
become. It is almost too good to be true and you hesitate in your weakness.
And then
the hope and courage is born to follow your brother home! You would go home to
the father who loved you and would surely forgive you and allow you to serve
him. You would go home to the father who would lift you out of the misery and
hopelessness you had fallen into. You would go home because there was a path of
return, with a price paid to cover all your debts.
What
exquisite hope his father was to the prodigal! How that hope would have lifted
him out of the mire he was in and propelled him to return home! And what courage
was given him by his brother who sought him to bring him home! He was not
forgotten and he was wanted!
So here some of us are, like the prodigal,
eating husks with the swine for this is not much more that this world has to
offer. What hope our Father must have had when He sent us out into the world that
we would remember the splendour we came from, that we would want to run home.
And so a great sacrifice was made for our return. The Son who came to guide and to seek us to bring us home climbed the hill of Calvary so that we could in our lowest earthly moments say:
For
me Your body was broken,
For
me Your blood was spilt,
For
me Your death was offered
That
I might live with You still.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Modern Prodigal Son by Liz Lemon Swindle)
Never before had a fisherman stepped
Onto the waves of the sea.
He knew how quickly they could
Take him into the depths of the deep.
But the Master had bid him come
And he ached to be with Him.
Like Peter of old, I fear to step
Out of the rocking boat,
I fear losing the ground beneath my feet.
I see Him in the distance,
His hand outstretched waiting for me,
I too long to be with Him
But the waves try so eagerly to swallow me.
The boat rocks and seeks to destroy me,
I cry my tears of daily pain
And I wonder if anything of me will remain.
I wait for Him to come to me to rescue me
And like Peter deliver me from the depths
Of the raging sea;
I hear Him say:
“To know yourself,
YOU have to come to ME.”
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Step of Faith by Michael Malm)
“Why did the Lord ask such things of Abraham? Because, knowing what his future would be and that he would be the father of an innumerable posterity, He was determined to test him. God did not do this for His own sake for He knew by His foreknowledge what Abraham would do; but the purpose was to impress upon Abraham a lesson to enable him to attain unto knowledge that he could not obtain in any other way.
“That is why God tries all of us. It is not for
his own knowledge for He knows all things beforehand. He knows all your lives
and everything you will do. But He tries us for our own good that WE MAY KNOW
OURSELVES; for it most important that a man should know himself.”
-
George
Q. Cannon, (Gospel Truth, comp. Jerreld L. Newquist, 2 Vols [1974]
1:113)
I am beginning to see the truth of this. Just
as God wanted Abraham to know what Abraham would do in the most severe of
circumstances, he desires this for us too. We can only know what we will do if we
are placed in a situation that requires our response. To know our commitment to
God, we have to be asked to show it under adverse conditions. To know our strength, we have to be asked to
flex our muscles.
There are tests of faith where we have to reach
back past our earthly lives and into our pre-mortal lives to discover who we truly are and have always been. Mortal life is a state of weakness. It’s also a state of
inheritance of intergenerational habits and teachings we have be programmed to
follow. That is not to say that because one of our parents was weak with
something, we have to be weak too but sometimes breaking the cycle of weakness
is a daunting task.
Many of us do not believe in ourselves. Either
we have been taught to feel that way since birth or we have had a particularly
adverse experience that has caused us to mistrust ourselves. The biggest
disadvantage, however, is that we do not remember how brilliant we were before
we came to this earth. Consider this thought:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…it is our
light, not our darkness, which most frightens us. You may ask yourself, “Who am
I to be brilliant, talented and fabulous?”
Actually, who are you NOT to be? You were born to make manifest the
glory of God that is within you. It is not just some of us…. It is all of us. And
as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the
same. “ (Marianne Williamson, “A Return To Love – Reflections on the Principles
of A Course in Miracles”)
We of the second estate were brave enough to
fight the Son of the Morning and his angels for our turn on earth and our
eternal destiny (Revelation 12:7-9; D&C 76:25-26; Moses 4:1-4; Isaiah
14:12-15; Abraham 3:27-28). This is the strength and this is the power which we
need to reach back for when we are tested to be proven worthy of that which we wanted
before we were born – eternal life with
God – our eternal destiny.
Right now I am going through the testing ground
I did not expect. I feel like God has put me in a jail and said to me: “You
will not be able to do anything unaided. I will bring you down to the depths of
humility and show you your weakness and your strength. I will make you lose the
you that you have become in this mortal shell and I will reveal to you who you
have always been, who you were when you were with Me. To get to know yourself,
you have to lose yourself.”
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory
Do we come from God, who is our home.
(William Wordsworth, Ode on Intimations of
Immortality)
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Enlightenment by Judy Cooley)
Judy Cooley Art – Uplifting & Joyful LDS Paintings – Altus Fine Art
Be
still my soul
And
know that He leads you
By
the voice of His heart.
He
beckons and He calls
Your
spirit to ignite
To
truth and godly path.
His
love will find you,
He
will lead you and save your soul,
He
is the Shepherd
Who
will answer your call.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art by AI)
