THE GOSPEL TRAIN

 

 

 

I want to share with you a very motivating and uplifting excerpt from my daughter’s Sacrament talk:

 

“My Grandma had battled cancer for nearly 3 years. One Saturday we received a phone call letting us know she had taken a bad turn and we needed to come and say our goodbyes. As hard as that experience was, I look back on it fondly as it left me with a very special lesson to learn, a lesson that I would continuously draw upon for the rest of my life. My whole family was present but I remember her particularly targeting me, my siblings and my cousins. She wasn’t able to talk much but when she did, all she kept saying was: “Stay on the gospel train”. At first we didn’t think much of it but she became increasingly persistent: “Stay on the gospel train”. I love a good analogy – In fact, I look for it in everything and so, naturally, I ended up finding one in her message. We are all passengers on the train of life. The tracks are our personal divinely written journey that we cannot always navigate on our own. When we board the train, we have a specific destination in mind but we don’t ever see it until we get there. Sometimes during our journey, there may be track work that slows us down. There may be other stations along the way that look more appealing than our final destination, so we get off and explore them. Sometimes we may travel through a dark tunnel or two without being able to see the light at the other end. Thankfully, we have a train conductor. Without him, we wouldn’t be able to navigate the twists and turns of the tracks or make our way through that dark tunnel. Without him, we wouldn’t even be able to find our way back onto the train after getting off at one of the stations. So we show faith by putting our trust in the train conductor. We get to know him and love him because we feel safe in his hands. So we decide to stay on the train. Every now and then, he puts our train on a different set of tracks and opens our eyes to the possibility of a destination we have not yet considered. Throughout our journey we begin to see that he understands the characteristics of the tracks much better than we do so we sit back and let him drive our train and we let him decide where we will end up. We must stay on the gospel train though to experience joy at our final destination.”  (Christie Parton, Tuggerah Lakes Ward, Australia Newcastle Stake)

 

I want to pay homage to my mother-in-law who arrived at the end of her journey so valiantly and left a priceless legacy to my children but most of all I want to honour the Conductor of my train, He who has engineered, created, atoned and made my journey possible: the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace…..

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

ARTIST: David Bowman