KAHLIL GIBRAN ON PAIN

The Master Potter by Paige Payne

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your 

understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart 

may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily

miracles of your life,

your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, 

even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters

of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you

heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in

silence and tranquility;

For his hand, though heavy and hard,

is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been

fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His

own sacred tears.

- Kahlil Gibran

 

A FALL FROM GRACE

 

The year I studied David’s story for the first time, I was as devastated with his fall from grace as much as I was enthralled by the Israelite boy who slew a lion and a bear (1 Samuel 17:34-36) and ‘the uncircumcised Philistine who dared to defy the armies of the living God’  because  ‘there was a cause in Israel’ (1 Samuel 17:26,29). His Israelite blood coursing through his veins with valour and warrior spirit won my heart. I considered him one of the inspirational voices of the Old Testament as I followed his rise from the heroic Israelite boy to the king of the golden age of Israel.

David’s achievements impressed me but his psalms blew me away. His words appealed to the poet in me. I was enchanted by the depth of his soulful worship of Jehovah and the national sovereignty of Israel that was so closely knit with his heart. However, I learnt much from David and his humanity. He showed very well that no matter how high you climb, the ground beneath your feet is never 100% steady. In this life of uncertainty, if we are not alert enough, we will likely one day fall. The worst of it is when the fall costs you your exaltation.

Despite all his great accomplishments David made one very big error of judgment. He became very comfortable as a monarch of a successful kingdom. This comfort zone became detrimental to his ability to endure to the end. As his kingdom ran like a well-oiled machine, his approach to his kingly duties became somewhat lax. "At the time when kings go forth to battle" (2 Sam 11:1) David chose to send Joab and all Israel to fight Ammonites while he remained in Jerusalem, strolling upon the roof of his house to cool off in the heat of the night.

 

This was David's first and big mistake that began his gradual demise into depths of sin from which he could not extricate himself. Sin seldom happens in one giant leap. As Elder Boyd K. Packer says: "I don't think anyone steps off a precipice into the depths of immorality and apostasy. They slide down the slippery sides of the chasm...." (Improvement Era. May 1970, p. 7)  

 

It would seem that David didn't think he needed his armour of God on such a hot night while he was lounging and relaxing away from battle but the adversary doesn't take sabbaticals and he took advantage of David's lack of protection. David spotted a temptation bigger than the Goliath he slew so valiantly some years prior. Not turning away once he happened to see a woman washing herself his gaze lingered enough to discover she was beautiful. Not content with leaving it there, he inquired about her. This should have stopped him in his tracks for the reply he got was that her name was Bathsheba (which means "daughter of the covenant") and that she was married to a man called Uriah (which means "Jehovah is my light").

 

The adultery that happened next was tragic but what happened after it was devastating. David dared to believe that he could conceal his sin, not just from Israel but from God. As he devised one plan after another to cover his sin, he developed a treacherous character that led him to the loss of his salvation. When he failed to entice Uriah to spend time with his wife so that the conceived child could be passed off as his, David allowed the spirit of murder to enter his heart. He devised a plan that would ensure Uriah's death at the front lines of battle and took Bathsheeba to be his wife.

 

At what point do you think David could have stopped himself from advancing towards the edge of the precipice? None of this need have happened if David was at the right place at the right time, namely, out on the battlefield instead of the roof of his house.

 

A warrior with a battle he so tragically lost….a loss that no doubt pierced the heart of Jehovah…..

 

What win I if I gain the thing I seek?

A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy?

Who buys a minute's myrth to wail a week

Or sells eternity to get a toy?

For one sweet grape, who would the vine destroy?

Or what fond beggar but to touch the crown,

Would with the scepter straight be stricken down.

- William Shakespeare

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: David's First Victory by William Strutt (1825-1915)

THE BOOK OF LIFE

 

Book of Life by Chris Brazelton

Because I am a writer, the very essence of me has been spilt on paper….in my journals, my blogs, my poetry.  My thoughts, feelings, perceptions, understanding, my lessons, my experience here on earth…is all documented. I often look at my journals and notebooks I have used as my companions over the years and I feel sorrow that I will leave them behind when I am called home.

I am convinced that I was a writer in my pre-earth life and that all my writing is waiting for me somewhere in a room that was my very own….and so I  have also hoped that there would be someone I know in heaven who has copied all my earthly writing to add to the existing stash for me to own for eternity.

There just so happens to be a book in heaven in which are recorded names of the righteous who will be immortalized in the analls of eternal history. This book is called the Book of Life:

“In one sense the Book of Life is the total of a person’s thoughts and actions – the record of his life. However, the scriptures also indicate that a heavenly record is kept of the faithful, including their names and accounts of their righteous deeds (Rev 3:5; 20:12; D&C 88:2;128:6-7; Alma 5:58) .”  (LDS Guide to the Scriptures, Book of Life)

A St George Temple worker by the name of Elder John Mickelson Lang received a revelation in 1928 regarding the Book of Life that explains the process of this record keeping:

“Every spirit that comes to earth has a guardian angel, whose duty it is to keep a record of the individual’s parentage, the conditions under which it was born, its inheritance, environment, thoughts and desires, and when the individual’s life is completed, the guardian angel’s mission ends. It returns, makes its report and hands in the record it has kept. This record is placed upon the other book, spoken of as The Book of Life. All this gave me to understand that in this other book is preserved the names and perfect dates of every spirit that ever came to earth.” (Joseph Heinerman, Temple Manifestations, (1836-1930), St George Temple)

 

I want to remember the beauty

Surrendered by the withered rose

And all the memories of my life

Near and far,

I want to take them with me

When I am called to cross the bar.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

A SUFFERING SERVANT

 

"Oh God Where Art Thou" by Paul Marli - LDS ART

Chapters 52 and 53 of Isaiah contain the greatest Messianic prophecy identifying the Messiah as ‘the Suffering Servant’. This was the Saviour’s role in His mortal life. This prophecy is also dualistic in nature, meaning it speaks of two men in very similar roles.

In this prophecy Isaiah says the Saviour’s visage was “marred more than any man”. This is a reference to His crucifixion and suffering on Calvary when He atoned for the sins of the world (Isaiah 52:14).

When visiting the Nephites, the Saviour Himself made it clear that there shall be another servant in the latter days who shall accomplish ‘a great and marvelous work’. Even though there will be many who will not believe him, the Saviour said this servant shall be ‘marred’ because of them and be persecuted throughout his life until they succeed in killing him. This latter-day servant is Joseph Smith. (3 Nephi 21:9,10; Old Testament Student Manual, commentary for Isaiah 52:13-15).

I am amazed at how similar Joseph’s earthly life was to that of the Saviour’s. Like many other prophets, he was the prototype of Christ. When Joseph cried out in misery to God whilst in Liberty jail, the Lord told him that hell shall rage against him (D&C 122:1-2). This truly proved to be true.

Right from the beginning Joseph was aware that he was destined to be “a disturber and an annoyer of Satan’s kingdom” (JSH 1:20). Two years prior to his death he said that ‘envy and wrath of man have been his common lot all the days of his life and that ‘deep water was what he was wont to swim in, which had become second nature to him’ (D&C 127:2). That is a description of one hard life….

This is how he saw himself:

“I am like a huge, rough stone rolling down from a high mountain, and the only polishing I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else, striking with accelerated force against religious bigotry, priestcraft, lawyer-craft, doctor-craft, lying editors, suborned judges and jurors, and the authority of perjured executives, backed by mobs, blasphemers, licentious and corrupt men and women – all hell knocking off a corner here and a corner there” (Teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith, p 304).

Not only did Joseph have to contend with the unbelievers but he often had to struggle with opposition within the Church: “In early 1844 a group of apostates in Nauvoo, Illinois, declared the Prophet Joseph Smith to be a fallen prophet and tried to start a rival church. Some even held secret meetings, during which they plotted to kill him” (See Glen L. Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise [2002], 357-62).

I am certain that Joseph felt it was all worth it when the Saviour sealed upon him his exaltation a year prior to his death:

“For I am the Lord thy God and will be with thee even unto the end of the world, and through all eternity, for verily I seal upon you your exaltation, and prepare a throne for you in the kingdom of my Father…..Behold, I have seen your sacrifices, and will forgive all your sins….”  (D&C 132:49,50)

A mission achieved, a life well endured……I wonder how many of his critics would be willing to live a life like his. 

 

You stood so resolute and willing

In the councils of heaven,

Knowing the jaws of hell

Would open at the mention of your name.

 

Still, you knelt in the sacred grove

And uttered the words of faith.

You honoured your promise

To restore the truth

And you opened the heaven’s gate.

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN  

THE MIGHTY DAVID

 

There has not been a king who loved the God of Israel more than King David. When he conquered Jerusalem he brought the ark of the covenant into the city ‘with gladness’ and led a procession of Israelites playing instruments, shouting, singing and dancing ‘before the Lord with all his might’ in praise of the God he worshipped (2 Samuel 6:12-15). No king of Israel was more free from idolatrous inclinations or practices than David. Because of this, he became the standard of excellence that all subsequent kings came to be measured by (The Old Testament Student Manual Book 2, Enrichment F-1).

David’s valour and his accomplishments as  king were outstanding. His reign is known in the annals of history as ‘the golden age of Israel’ (The Old Testament Student Manual Book 1 p 287). His love for the God of Israel can leave you breathless through the psalms he wrote about Him. But David was also the greatest tragedy of the ancient world. His life is the most dualistic out of any and accentuates Jehovah’s warning about kings. It goes on to show, the higher the rise, the greater the fall. To understand the tragedy of the fall we must understand his accomplishments as a king.

David did three things for temporal Israel that typify what Christ will do for spiritual Israel.  Firstly, following Saul's death, Israel's kingdom was divided in two for seven years. The tribe of Judah accepted David as their king and the rest of the tribes of Israel were ruled by Ishbosheth, one of the sons of Saul, whom Abner, Saul's commanding general set up as the new king (2 Sam 2:8-9).

 

Despite being anointed as Israel's king, by Samuel, the prophet, David refrained from taking action against Ishbosheth in honour of the covenant he made with Jonathan not to retaliate against Saul's family when he came to power. Following Ishbosheth's murder David showed great wisdom and judgment by executing the two men responsible (see (2 Samuel 3). This brought him into favour with the tribes under Ishbosheth and ultimately united all twelve tribes into one nation under the ultimate leadership of God.

 

Secondly, David succeeded in winning the whole extent of the promised land for the covenant people. For the first time the chosen people of the Lord controlled the whole land promised to Abraham's posterity nearly a thousand years earlier.

 

Thirdly, David established Zion or Jerusalem as the spiritual and political center of Israel. Under David's reign Israel reached its golden age. Never before had Israel achieved such heights of power nor did they ever again. (Old Testament Student Manual, Book 1 p 291)

 

All this for the love of Jehovah and then this: “….As the transgressor moves deeper and deeper in his sin, and the error is entrenched more deeply and the will to change is weakened, it becomes increasingly near-hopeless, and he skids down and down until either he does not want to climb back or he has lost the power to do so.” (President Spencer W. Kimball, The Miracle of Forgiveness [1969], 117). This became the tragic path of David but more of that later….

 

So do we hold David in our esteem as the greatest Israel king or do we think of him as a tragedy to be remembered???

 

David was anointed to sit on the throne of Israel and to establish the royal family that would produce the King of Kings who would one day sit ‘on the throne of his father David’ (Luke 1:32-33).  My question is this: was David chosen to be an example of the good King who was to come or was he chosen to show that no king can be as good as the King that was to come????? I often think our present-day governments will with their weakness and corruption accentuate the blessing that the King of Kings will be when He comes to govern the world.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: King David Playing the Harp by Gerard Van Honthorst [1622]

HE WHO KNOWS ME BEST

 

By His Wounds by Chris Brazelton

The greatest surprise of this stage of my life, as I struggle with bad health, is how it has affected me mentally and how I have responded to it. I never knew its effects would be so far and wide. As I have looked back over my life, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t know beforehand how I would react to anything I have experienced in my life.

Sometimes we think we know ourselves but we really don’t. I have noticed the push in our society is to invest ourselves in achieving this very thing….we are told it’s the greatest thing we can do. Experience, however, seems to do that with great proficiency.  This is why we are here.  

I had a very unusual experience which I wrote about recently. I was musing about my life, which is happening more often than ever before as I approach the last leg of my journey here. As I was reflecting, I found myself in my mind in front of the great Judge, God the Father. He asked me three questions: How did you enjoy your mortal probation? What do you think you learnt from it? How do you think you did overall?

An understanding like no other flooded my being that there was nothing I could hide or tell half-truths about because He knew the very essence of my being: my innermost thoughts and intents, my sins, my rebellious moments in response to my sufferings, the times I had questioned Him and His goodness, my dislikes and likes, my conduct, my earthly indignities, my ingratitude, everything that made me tick….there was nothing, absolutely nothing about me or in me that He did not know. Every time I opened my mouth, nothing would come out. I knew with every fibre of my being that He knew the answer to every question before I could form it in my mind.

I felt like I was transparent before Him. He was not watching me but looking into the very depths of my soul. It was as if He was inside me. I understood clearly as I understand that day follows night because I can see it, that God is so inter-connected with His children that it defies our mortal understanding. We, here and now, do not know and cannot fathom our spiritual origin or the Father’s connection with His children. God is beyond our understanding.

Then hope flooded my being. I had nothing to say and would not need to. There was someone else who saw into the very depths of my soul during the greatest moment of suffering known to man. He who absorbed the totality of my life could and would answer all the questions the Father would have of my conduct on Judgment Day: my intentions, my achievements, my failings. He, the Advocate who suffered for my soul would with His strength make up for my frailty (D&C 45:4-5). 

This is grace, the ultimate all-encompassing gift, second only to eternal life. This grace too is beyond our understanding. We will fully come to know it when we are face to face with the justice of the Father. We will know then who the Saviour truly is…a sacrifice that none of us could give, a hope of salvation, another God we are yet to comprehend.

Often You come into my mind

And I wonder about my ‘enoughs’:

Did I go to Church enough?

Did I serve enough?

Have I done enough?

 

I see you in my heart smiling

And I know….

What will matter in the end the most

Is not what I have done

But what I have become.

 

I follow in Your footsteps

And try to be like Thee

But often fail because of weakness

that is in me.

 

Your blood flows from Calvary still

And I hear You say:

It is enough, I will make up the rest,

I accept Your holy quest!

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

THE WISH

 

I look back on my upbringing years in Croatia during the 60s with great fondness. A large part of my gratitude goes to the Catholic Church for giving me my foundation of faith in God. I cannot separate my memories of my country from my Catholic upbringing. It was so much a part of my youth. I was the one in my family that attended Church services and confessions. It was an entire culture of my upbringing and all I knew of life.

At the end of the street we lived in was the cemetery with our local church. That cemetery with the church was the focal point of our neighbourhood. We had to walk through it to get to three other streets. In one of those streets was my school so the cemetery and the Church became my daily visit. School was divided into two shifts, the morning shift and the afternoon shift. The afternoon shift didn’t end until 6 pm. In winter, when the sun went down early, it was an interesting walk home….

I never looked at the cemetery with morbid attitude. I am a poet and I feel deeply. I knew graves with poetic and heart rendering prose on the gravestones. I knew where children were buried and I knew which graves were visited often. All Saints Day was one of my favourite times of the year. The cemetery came alive with visitors coming and going all day and at night the place was alight with candles. It was magical.

The cemetery was also our playground with luscious grass to configure the clouds in our minds and to simply get together with friends and play. This is where we smelled the first sign of spring with the violets and new flowers born after the snow had melted. It also heralded one of my favourite times of the year – Easter. Easter Sunday found us at Church with our baskets of food for the priest to bless. Christmas was another. Buying presents was not the custom I was ever familiar with. What I looked forward to the most was the nativity scene in our Church. Christmas was all about Jesus.

When my family moved to Australia in my early teens, my world changed. As I saw beyond my little Croatian town, my thinking and wondering went into overdrive. By the time I was 16, I was asking serious questions like, ‘what is the purpose of life?’ and  ‘why am I here on this planet?’ I realized that the Catholic Church did not have a lot of answers.

I found the answer to my purpose in life when I was 17 years old, in the doctrine of a church I had heard about, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is called The Plan of Salvation. It blew me away with its simplicity and truthfulness. It taught me that I lived with God in pre-earth life as a spirit and that I was born into mortality to one day be resurrected to immortality and live with God again. And not just to live with Him but to become like Him, who is a resurrected, exalted God.

In this Church, I found Christ. He was no longer someone out of my reach that I believed died for me but a personal Saviour of my soul, with a kinship going back to the life I lived before. My association with Him deepened over the years. The more I learnt of Him, the more of an idol He became. I know I wanted to be like Him before I was even born because He was and is the path to my eternal existence.

I know who He is, He is ……the bread of life (John 6:31,51), the light of the world (8:12), the good shepherd (10:11,14), the resurrection and life (11:25), the way, the truth and the life (14:6). He is also the potter and we are the clay in His hands (Isaiah 64:8). He makes of us what we can never become on our own. He is the Master builder and the Master healer of our souls. He is our only hope of salvation and there is none else (Isaiah 43:10-11; 45:5,6,14,18,22; 46:9; Deut 4:35,39; 5:8; 1 Kings 8:60; D&C 76:1; 2 Nephi 25:20; 31:21; Moses 6:52)

I had a memory from my pre-earth life some time ago. I was sitting with the Saviour and He was saying to me: “I will save you and I will make up for everything.” When I cry my tears, it’s a memory to hold onto.

 

When in the realms of heaven

You asked me what in mortality

I wanted to be,

It was so easy, I said I wanted

To be like Thee.

 

You warned me of the suffering

That would have to equal in measure

To what you would suffer for me;

That my life would not be easy

But that You would

make up for everything.

 

Now I am here,

I fear the refiners’ fire of the kiln

When Your potter hands are moulding me

But I try to be the woman I was who said

She wanted to be like Thee.

 

Some days I want to change my wish

I am not worthy to bear my suffering,

But then I notice the chains

around my heart are broken,

and I remember:

You will make up for everything.

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Spring of Life by Chris Brazelton)

Chris Brazelton - Official Website