Your love, O
Your love!
Like a
soothing balm
From gilded
courts on high;
It flows, and
it calms,
It seeks and
it finds the troubled mind.
It gathers and
it lifts the sorrowing,
the lame, the
weak;
Ever and ever
Your mercy divine
Looks for
those who achingly weep.
-
CATHRYNE ALLEN
To be sick and incapacitated turns even the smallest
tasks into mountains. Seeing mountains before you all the time, makes you feel
very small. It’s a place of powerlessness, a place of vulnerability and a place
I didn’t expect, that of humility.
By being dependent on others shows you what you cannot
otherwise see – your sense of self-importance. It brings you closer to the understanding
that you are not as powerful as you thought you were and that you cannot
survive and rise to higher ground on your own merit. In a world of ego that we
live in, the lessons that lead to humility are imperative.
Herein is the necessity for humility….. Mortality is a
state of weakness which we cannot rise above on our own. The good news is that
a path has been provided to a power that can lift us. That path leads to
Calvary and is laced with humility.
You might say the Saviour experienced mortal life at ‘ground zero’. And
in doing so he ‘descended below all things that he might comprehend all things’:
our difficulties, our sorrows, our sins, our imperfections, our sufferings, our
inabilities, our mortal weakness (D&C 88:6; 62:1). He descended below all
things that He might know the state of weakness of mortal life.
Imagine a God leaving His exalted throne and all that comes with it, to
be rejected, spat upon, scourged, reviled and crucified. Imagine the humility
it would take to subject yourself to all that, despite the power within your
grasp....and all this for the sake of someone else and not yourself. Does it
not make you wonder about your self-worth? Embrace the beating of your
cherished heart, you were worth it.
I have been keeping a list of the Saviour’s characteristics for many years.
So far I have 18. One year I noticed a scripture that stunned me and opened my
eyes to the Saviour’s humility:
“Therefore, I command you to build a house unto me, for the gathering
together of my saints, that they may WORSHIP ME” (D&C 115:8). Can you
imagine the amount of humility it would take for a God totally devoid of pride
to say such a thing? It would have to be someone who knows perfectly well who
he is, is confident in that knowledge and most of all, has a purity of spirit
and heart. Compare this to Lucifer’s desire to be worshipped (Moses 4:1-4;
1:16-19).
It amazes me that someone so powerful who calls himself ‘the king of
heaven’ (2 N 10:14), who can create worlds and annihilate them by the power of
His word can also be so humble (Helaman 12:9-17; D&C 63:4; Isaiah 11:4).
This is the perfection of God, the balance is indisputable.
My mountains have shown me that I can do nothing of myself to rise to
the summit but herein lies my hope:
“And if men come unto me I will show unto them their
weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is
sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble
themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become
strong unto them.” (Ether 12:27)
Note that ‘weakness’ at the beginning of this
scripture refers to the state of mortality. The ‘weak things’ mentioned at the
end of the scripture refers to our individual ‘weaknesses’.
Whether the mountains will be removed or I will be carried to the
summit, I know not. I only know that the Saviour of my soul has the power to do
both.
O
the pain that seared Your heart
As
You encountered human misery
On
the dusty roads of Galilee!
You
embraced it all so lovingly
And
took it with You to the hill of Calvary.
You,
who ached for our misery,
Became
the beacon of hope
For
all who accept Your suffering.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
You opened my heart
And searched for what
You there did not see;
My feeble faith and lack of trust
Stood in contrast to your will for me.
You sorrowed at the tears I shed
With every step I was led to take
To find You in my hour of agony.
How patiently You stood waiting
With open arms hoping I would come to Thee;
How patiently You hoped
I would give You all that was lacking in me.
- Cathryne Allen
True faith
can never show its strength in the absence of resistance. Resistance comes when
nothing is going right, when your pain is at its highest level, when fulfilment
of God’s promises is slow in coming, when your friends sew doubts in your mind,
when God seems far away and you feel abandoned…..
Resistance
comes when your trust in God needs to be tested. I discovered that you can have
faith in God and His existence and even in a multitude of proofs of His love
but you can still waver in your trust of Him. For fifty years since I joined
the Church, I thrived in my faith in God and then my health was taken away and the real
test came. The resistance manifested itself through trust. I had to ask myself
many times if I trusted in everything I believed about Him.
In Lecture
3 of Lectures On Faith, Joseph Smith said that “three things are necessary in
order that any rational and intelligent being may exercise faith in God unto
life and salvation”: 1. The idea that He actually exists; 2. A correct idea of
His character, perfections, and attributes; and 3. An actual knowledge that the
course of life which he is pursuing is according to His will.
Some years
ago I decided to follow up on this advice and studied the Book of Mormon that
year looking for the Saviour’s attributes and traits within its pages. I wanted
to know Him. I wrote what I came across in the margins of the book. When I had
finished I flicked through the book and I found two particular attributes on
just about every page. They told me that the Saviour was merciful and that He always
fulfils His promises.
Trusting
the mercy has been an easy one but fulfilment of promises is much harder, for two
reasons…..1. we do not know HOW He will
fulfil His promise as our ways are not God’s ways (Isaiah 55:8) and 2. We do
not know WHEN the fulfilment will come as the Lord works on a different time schedule
for ‘all is as one day with God and time only is measured unto men’ (Alma 40:8).
When the
promised something is not happening, especially when you are in dire need, the
resistance steps in whispering doubts. I have been there, I know. Instead of
stepping up my faith in the face of resistance, my faith has wavered through
questions such as: do I really know Him? Do I really trust Him? Does He really
love me? Does he want the best for me? Well, yes that last one could go either
way. He always wants the best for you and you might not know how that best is
going to play out in the fulfilment of his promise. Another consideration is
that His priority is our eternal ‘best’ opposed to the ‘best’ here and now.
I have a
testimony that the strength of our faith indeed brings about rewards from
heaven. When I was going through my divorce some years ago, I was in terrible
emotional pain. It felt like it was going to rip my chest open. That was the
time I delved into the scriptures and studied about the Atonement because I was
convinced that only God could take that pain away.
For weeks I
prayed ‘through my faith in Jesus Christ and the power of the Atonement’ for a
healing of my broken heart. Every time I experienced a wave of pain throughout
the day, I would utter the same prayer calling upon the power of the Atonement
to heal me. Never once did I think it could not happen or that it would not happen.
My faith was infallible despite the unrelenting pain. I persisted and persisted and after some weeks
the pain was gone. All my negative emotions towards my ex-husband disappeared
and I was able to embrace him and his new life and move on with mine.
Some years
ago I was going through a difficult time and as I was studying the scriptures one
day, looking for answers, into my mind came a voice which said: “You were
fearless in your pre-mortality.” I was
rather stunned and answered: “It was easy then. Here it is harder because I
have to walk by faith.” The voice came back: “Nevertheless, this is what is
needful. This is why you are here. You cannot become gods without faith which creates
reality.”
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
“If there is
an imagery upon which I would focus, it is two scriptures from the Book of
Mormon. The one in which we are reminded that Jesus himself is the gate keeper
and that ‘he employeth no servant there’ (2 Nephi 9:41).
“I will tell
you….out of the conviction of my soul….what I think the major reason is (why he
‘employeth no servant there’), as contained in another Book of Mormon scripture
which says He waits for you ‘with open arms’ (Mormon 6:17). That’s why He’s there!
“He waits for
you with open arms. That imagery is too powerful to brush aside….It is imagery
that should work itself into the very center core of one’s mind – a rendezvous
impending, a moment in time and space, the likes of which there is none other.
And that rendezvous is a reality. I certify that to you. He does wait for us
with open arms, because His love for us is perfect.”
-
Neal A. Maxwell, But A Few Days, p
7
I have no life but this,
To know the scope of You.
I have no wish but this,
To feel that You want this too.
I have no life but this,
To know Thy approving glance;
To kneel at Thy feet,
To know there is a chance.
I have no life but this
To follow the path to Thy throne
To be greeted with a holy kiss,
And know the reality of such bliss.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
“I fear that some members of the Lord’s Church
live far beneath their privileges with regard to the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Some are distracted by the things of the world that block out the influence of
the Holy Ghost, preventing them from recognizing spiritual promptings. This is
a noisy and busy world that we live in.
Remember that being busy is not necessarily being spiritual. If we are not
careful, the things of this world can crowd out the things of the Spirit.
“Some are spiritually deadened and past feeling
because of their choices to commit sin. Others simply hover in spiritual
complacency with no desire to rise above themselves and commune with the
Infinite. If they would open their hearts to the refining influence of this
unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, a glorious new spiritual dimension would
come to light.
“Their eyes would gaze upon a vista scarcely
imaginable. They could know for themselves things of the Spirit that are
choice, precious, and capable of enlarging the soul, expanding the mind, and
filling the heart with inexpressible joy.”
-
Elder
Joseph B. Wirthlin (1917-2008), The
Unspeakable Gift, GC April 2003
How silently, how diligently
You work for the salvation of men.
Your witness of my life
Written in your heart as with a holy pen.
When face to face one day we meet
I will kneel at your holy feet.
-
CATHRYNE
ALLEN
He
arose and rebuked the roaring winds
and
the raging sea,
He,
who with His word
caused
the earth to be,
Spoke
to the Galilean tempest:
“Peace, be still”.
He
who has all things
under
His command,
Calmed
the troubled sea of dismay
in
the souls of men.
He,
who holds all humanity
in
the palm of His hand,
Caused
the waves of the sea
to
whisper His name.
-
CATHRYNE ALLEN
