A STEP OF FAITH

 

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)

 

TO KNOW YOURSELF

 

“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

 

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)

IDEALISM VS REALITY

 

I am a chronic idealist. I came to understand this about myself at a deeper level one year when I discovered the definition of different existent personalities. I found myself in the key characteristics of one of the rarest personality types called the INFJ personality, also known as the Advocate. INFJs are insightful, driven by a strong moral compass, intuitive and idealistic to a fault.

It sounds good but all that idealism has one huge drawback. Strong idealism can lead to unrealistic expectations and difficulty in handling life. A friend I made some years ago found it difficult to understand why such strong optimism would come out of my mouth when I was teaching lessons at Church but then would dissolve into tears in my private life. She said: “I don’t understand. This is not you”. She thought it was just a matter of maintaining positivity and I was failing. I couldn’t understand it either. I thought I was just weak. When I came across the definition of the INFJ personality some time later, it was like staring in the mirror.

I have tried since then not to let many people into my private world to see my vulnerabilities because even though I long to be understood, I feel constantly judged and yes my personality also struggles with judgment. Sometimes I feel like I am Jekyl and Hyde.

Because of my idealistic nature, I live in a cloud of faith. Pragmatic approach to problems is difficult. My intuitive trait focuses on the big picture and possibilities rather than concrete details. This has been the hardest trial of my last two years of bad health. My faith in everything I have ever believed in has been tested to the limit.

This is the difficulty: faith is believing in the unseen. It is idealism at its finest because it rarely manifests itself in reality. Things of the spirit are difficult to see, touch and deal with yet they are acutely real to the person who feels it in their soul. That’s me.

One of my favourite stories from the life of Jesus is when He and His disciples travelled toward Jerusalem and found themselves hungry. When He saw a fig tree in the way, He approached it and finding nothing on it but leaves, He cursed the tree that it would not bear fruit ever again. The fig tree withered away as He spoke (Matthew 21:17-20).

When His disciples marveled, Jesus delivered the greatest discourse on faith but at the same time the ultimate idealistic achievement ever: “Verily, I say unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt  not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.” (v 21)

Now, when you think of a mountain, its density, its size, its weight, its evolvement through time, it makes the mountain the most concrete and impossible thing ever to be subject to the power of faith. Yet a man called the Brother of Jared did this very thing in ancient America when “he said to the mount Zerin, remove – and it was removed” (Ether 12:30). As we know, this man also saw the pre-mortal Christ as a result of his undaunting faith (Ether 3:9)

I have studied a lot about faith over the years and especially about its role in healing since I have suffered from bad health. I have been told in the scriptures that if I have faith I can be healed of anything (D&C 42:49-51). So strong is the power of faith that people in the meridian of time brought their sick into the streets and laid them on beds and couches so that a shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow them and heal them (Acts 5:12-15). Special miracles were also performed by the hands of Paul: “From his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.” (Acts 19:12)

This is what I call manifesting faith and it’s the kind of faith that I want and feel I should have as a Christian. Is it any wonder that my faith is being tested through the mountain called ‘pain’ that is obstructing my view? Some would call this mountain reality. To me it is an ideal to strive for.

Stay tuned. Perhaps this ideal will one day turn into reality. 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: No Man Knoweth the Hour by Liz Lemon Swindle)

LIVING WATER

 

Thou art the source of all my blessings,

Thou art the source of all my joy,

Thou art the living water

I drink with haste

And savour each and every drop

So careful of tragic waste.

Feed me Saviour ever more

The love that flows with every cup

Grant me my fill each day

That keeps me living and bears me up. 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art by AI)

OF FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS

 

I come from generations of poor peasants. I was born and raised in Croatia to Catholic parents. I remember the wheat fields I ran through, the shepherds and the animals they led to pasture, the Easter of spring and the Christmas of winter. I have not been back there for thirty years now. I don’t know that my heart could take it.

My father was the ultimate patriarch in our home and what he said was law. He was raised that way. He was the oldest of five sons in a small village and as was custom, he was expected to take over the family land and inherit the care of his parents in their old age. My father, however, did not see it that way. He didn’t want the village life so he procured an apprenticeship as a bricklayer in the neighbouring town. My grandfather was furious. He threw a chunk of bread on the floor in front of my father and told him that was the only thing he will ever get from him. Very dramatic…. No support for the path my father had chosen.  My father walked for miles every day, even in the rain, to the town where he worked. No bus for him.

My father had vision. When I was just a toddler he decided to move us to the city where his children would have more opportunities. Unfortunately, the country was part of Yugoslavia back then, under the socialist rule, and the only good opportunities that existed were reserved for anyone who belonged to the communist party. When I was on the cusp of my teenage years, my father’s vision extended all the way to Australia. I was two months shy of turning 14 when we arrived in Sydney. At 16 I was out working in an office and at 17 I went looking for a religion that could answer all the questions that the Catholic Church couldn’t.

I found The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints  in my local library. I inhaled all that I read and I knew I had to be a part of it. There was just one problem. My father decided to be HIS father. The ultimatum was given: to join the Church, I would have to leave home.  My father was beyond crushed when I left.  He did not expect that. My parents would not speak to me for a whole year. We reconciled through the efforts of my sister and a few years thereafter they went back to Croatia.

Since the time I was baptized 50 years ago, I have reflected a lot on that stressful period of my life when I was cut off from my family.  The repercussions of that event in my life have been more than I care to admit. Luckily, the benefits outweighed the sacrifice. My parents have long since passed away and I am still reaping the benefits of my Church membership. I have gone from grace to grace and been brought to higher ground of faith than I had ever imagined was possible. I have forged my own path. 

I have cried ancestral tears over my father since his passing. I have nothing but love and gratitude for him. At the time of our distress when I rejected his word as my law, he was a migrant in a new country and his favourite daughter was, in his eyes, joining a cult. He was trying to protect me. When I think of him, I see him as a little boy in a Croatian village with more than his share of family baggage and generations of incorrect programming. I love that little boy and want to hug him, now more than ever.

When in the realms of heaven I meet my father again, I will thank him for wanting to protect me but most of all I will thank him for his example of bravery in defying his father which I subconsciously followed and which led me into the arms of the Father I love above all and who aches to have us both return to Him . We will then meet at Jesus’ feet and we will remember the time that hurt us both the most but did not divide us forever.

Your life has come and gone

But your footprints remain

And your blood courses through my veins.

The flame of your sacrifices

Burns bright with all its might;

Your legacy, your love,

Your fatherly alms:

Forever etched

In the hollow of my heart.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Love of the Father by Ilse Kleyn - Fine Art of America)

A MIRACLE

 

She had heard of His wonderous works

As His fame spread throughout the land.

With fear and shame she approached,

Afraid to ask for a miracle at His hand.

 

If she could just touch, not having to beg,

His power would make her whole

And a clean woman she would again be.

He speaks: “Daughter, thy faith hath

Made thee whole, come, follow me.”

- CATHRYEN ALLEN 

(Art: Divine Healing by Ron DiCianni)