THE STORMS OF LIFE

 

 

I once had a discussion with a group of friends where a question was asked if we chose our parents in pre-mortal life. Many of them agreed that we didn’t because if we did, we would have all wanted to be born in the Church to goodly parents. I disagreed because I do not believe that we wanted to land on  a bed of roses and glide through mortality, otherwise what would have been the point of coming here? I believe we wanted to come to receive further progress and not to languish in worldly ease. We wanted the storms. We wanted storms because we wanted to become big ships at sea and not languish as little boats at the shore. 

 

I get it. Now that we are here, we don’t want the storms. It’s called being human. When we walk out of the baptismal font with hope of a better life, or walk out of the temple freshly wedded to the eternal companion of our choice, we tend to feel that we have made it and are on our way to celestial kingdom. Never in our wildest dreams do we envisage storms that are ahead of us. We do not plan on divorcing when we marry; or plan to bury a child when we enter the labour ward; or schedule chemotherapy when we commit to live the Word of Wisdom. When we commit ourselves to the journey that will take us to eternal life, we often expect, by virtue of our obedience, a smooth ride that will deliver us to the pearly gates.  Obedience, however, is not the teacher but the means of arriving at our chosen destination. The teacher is life. 

 

Every opposition in life is meant to teach us something,  help us overcome something, or make us rise to heights unknown. It all depends on our response. Will we sink or swim in the face of the storm? The ultimate though is to walk on water. Peter had the chance to learn that when he walked towards the Saviour in the midst of the billowing storm. He couldn’t grasp the lesson back then but I am guessing it didn’t take long after the Master was gone. Peter became so powerful that people brought out their sick into the street in the hope that his shadow would heal them (Acts 5:15). Now THAT is a big ship.

 

The naked truth is that God will not spare us the discomfort or hardship in this life if it will be for our ultimate good. We placed that trust in Him long ago. He will, however, be there to lift us up when we can’t go on; when the storms of this life seek to swallow us and the winds combine against our strength to break us. He will come in the final hour after we have learnt to trust, accept and seek His help to overcome. He will come. This is exactly why we were not afraid to come to difficult lives. We knew that He would come and empower us to overcome, to endure, to rise. We had faith back then in His capacity, His ability and His integrity. We did not only have faith that He COULD save us, but that He WOULD, at all cost, without fail.

 

This Christmas may we reflect on the faith that we had in Him long before He was born. May we renew our devotion to the Shepherd who desires to lead us, to love us, to protect us, to honour us, to exalt us. He would have us become our best…..to this end was He born.

 

How dear to the heart of the Shepherd

Is the flock of His sheep!

With tenderness and love

He watches over those in His keep.

How much do they love their Shepherd!

How closely they stay by His side,

With every footstep they follow

To forever in His care abide.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN

(ART: He Is My Refuge by Yongsung Kim)

UNDERSTANDING OUR WEAKNESS

I don't know of anyone who sees weakness as a positive thing. None of us want to be weak. We don't want to be seen as weak and we don't want to feel that we are weak. The world tells us we need to be super achievers and excel in all we do and that it is up to us to make ourselves successful.  For this reason we persist in making goals and tackling that which is beyond our capacity to overcome, relying solely on our motivation and willpower.  Both motivation and willpower are incredibly difficult to maintain and so we beat ourselves up when we fall short. And in the process we allow our weaknesses to define us.

Consider alcoholism. The weakness of drinking has now become the weakness of disease. I consider the mental aspect of alcoholism to be the most dangerous one. I do not agree with Alcoholics Anonymous who define people as 'alcoholics'. What's worse is that they tell people they are alcoholics for life. I get it, they want people to be vigilant but what happens when you label yourself? You act and behave according to that label. If you think you are an alcoholic you will always struggle with the temptation to drink. Even some who abstain from drink for years fall off the wagon because in the end what does an alcoholic do? An alcoholic drinks.

The danger comes in saying 'I am'. I AM is highly declarative. Once declared, it becomes a reality you live by. The Saviour declared himself to be The Bread of Life, The Fountain of Living Water, Alpha and Omega, The Great I AM, because that's who He is. It is important that we recognise that what we do is not who we are. In my opinion, It is better to say, "I am dealing with the issue of alcoholism" than to say "I am an alcoholic". This gives one hope that he or she can become free from the weakness of drinking. The world, however, does not offer this hope.

This is where it becomes important to understand 'weakness'. According to the Bible Dictionary, weakness is the primary condition of mortality and a state of being in this fallen world. It is unavoidable because mortality means weakness. Weakness means being human. The weakness of mortality is manifest in individual weaknesses and frailties that each person has.  In Ether 12:27, Christ told Moroni: "If men come unto me I will show unto them their 'weakness'. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble...."  Notice the word of 'weakness' is singular here. This is the condition of being weak. What the Saviour is referring to here is the weakness of mortality, not our individual weaknesses, of which He speaks in the latter part of the scripture when He says: "...for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them". The weak things He speaks of are in reference to 'weaknesses'.

The latter part of this scripture is where the hope of freedom lies. This is where Alcoholics Anonymous get it partly right. They acknowledge their powerlessness and turn their will over to their 'higher power'. This is where their success comes from, not from drumming into people that they are alcoholics. Herein lies the importance of recognising our weak condition of mortality and thereby acknowledging that we cannot rise above it without the divine power. This is the conviction which propelled us to accept Christ as our Saviour in the beginning. The weakness of mortality was given to us to bring us to the source of all power, that source being Christ. Discovering this truth in mortality is like stepping back in time behind the veil.

Unless we understand on a deeper level that we need the Saviour to enlarge our capacity, we will not be able to overcome our mortal shortcomings and navigate our mortal journey successfully long term. What is in reality this deeper level of understanding? It is a consistent appeal to Christ, in faith, to endow us with His atoning power so we can permanently overcome the weaknesses of this life and become free.

The Saviour 'descended below all things' for a purpose, so that He might comprehend all things (D&C 88:6), meaning all our sins and our weaknesses. In the words of Elder Tad Callister: "....you cannot sink farther than the light and sweeping intelligence of Jesus Christ can reach.....as long as there is one spark of the will to repent and to reach, He is there....." (The Atonement of Jesus Christ, April 2019). 

- Cathryne Allen, Did Not Our Hearts Burn When He Opened To Us The Scriptures?

published 2021 by amazon.com

THE WONDER OF SCRIPTURES

The most exhilarating part of the Saviour's earthly life would have to be post resurrection. I can only imagine the hope and speculation that would have circulated in the midst of His followers as the news spread that He lived again. My favourite of the events recorded of that time is his walk with two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-32) because this seemingly unimportant event has a connection to something very dear to my heart. It is of great marvel to me that when the two men recounted the story of His crucifixion and resurrection with dubious narration, the Saviour did not reveal himself to them to prove the story was true. Instead He chose to expound all the scriptures concerning himself (Luke 24:27) because they are they which testify of Him and His personification as the Messiah and the Saviour of the world (John 5:39). It was not until after the scriptures were expounded to them that they understood who He was. I have often wondered what the lesson was in all this. What was the Saviour trying to teach them? Perhaps that having the scriptures is the same as having Him in their midst as with the scriptures comes the power of the Spirit to enable all to believe in His divinity. This is attested by the two disciples who proclaimed upon His departure from them, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he........opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32).

Who do you see when you study the scriptures? The brave Jeremiah, the poetic Isaiah, the obedient Nephi, the repentant Alma? It is hard not to see these prominent and prolific figures. The challenge is and always will be, however, to see Christ on every page; whether in prophecies, in doctrine, in His dealings with humanity or valuable lessons learnt through the characters enshrined in the holy writ. I will tell you what I see: in the Old Testament I see the merciful Jehovah; in the New Testament I see the loving Saviour; in the Book of Mormon, I see the promised Messiah; and in the Doctrine and Covenants I see the majestic Christ. I have mentioned Ahab before who was the most wicked king of the northern kingdom of Israel. So wicked was he that Elijah told him the Lord will annihilate his whole posterity. Ahab did not repent but it took just one episode of sorrow on Ahab's part to evoke Jehovah's mercy. Because his sorrow brought him to the depths of humility the Lord told Elijah that his punishment will not be meted out in his life time but in the life time of his son (1 Kings 21:29). And did not the Saviour prove that 'greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends' (John 15:13) as he willingly remained on the cross until the suffering was complete and finished (John 19:28-30)? And who could not feel the anguish of Nephi as he prayed all day for deliverance from persecution and what joy must have filled his soul as he heard the expected Messiah say: "Lift up your head and be of good cheer......for on the morrow come I into the world...(3 Nephi 1:13)?  And who can read Doctrine and Covenants and not be in awe of the majestic Christ who has overcome all, and risen above all '.....for the Lord is God, and beside him there is no Saviour....Great is His wisdom, marvelous are his ways, and the extent of his doings none can find out' (D&C 76:1,2)

There was a time in my life when I felt I had nothing to live for. This is when the scriptures became my saving grace. They who testified of Him gave me strength to endure and to hope for 'life eternal because of my faith in him according to the promise' (Moroni 7:41). They renewed me because I came to know Him who renews all things and makes all things possible; Him who brings life to all that is dead and recovers all that is lost. In Him alone is safe harbour. In Him alone is endurance. In Him alone is life everlasting.

May we all believe that there is a life beyond our worst moments and may we find this belief within the pages of a book that can give us this life as expressed in a story of a man whose business was failing terribly and who was so deep in trouble that he was contemplating suicide. As a last resort he went to a priest who advised him to take a beach chair and a Bible to the water's edge, put the Bible on his lap, to open it and let the wind rifle the pages and when it rests on a page he should read the first words he sees. He assured him this will be his answer that will tell him what to do. A year later this same businessman went back to the priest in apparent affluence and success. The priest asked him if he did what he instructed him to do. The man assured him he did.

"You sat on a beach chair with the Bible in your lap?"
"Absolutely"
"You let the pages rifle until they stopped?"
"Absolutely"
"And what were the first words you saw?"
"Chapter II"

TO BE FREE

 

For years I admired and at times envied someone in my close circle who was doing all the wrong things but seemed to have it all. I felt under-privileged and even victimised by my persistent and arduous journey on the strait and narrow. At times I even wondered if doing the right things was worth it. I arrived at my 60s with pretty much nothing; no husband, no home, no financial security, no material possessions. Now that I am here, however, I realise I have something far more superior to any of these things.  And that someone who seemed to have it all? Well, she has bondage. Over the years as I have watched this person be led 'by the neck with a flaxen cord'  (2 Nephi 26:22) my feelings of admiration and envy have turned to pity and compassion. Recently I spent some time on the phone with this person as she related through tears her entrapment in an emotionally abusive and spiritually degrading situation. After years of bad choices, her faith in God has all but been destroyed and belief in the basics of the Gospel been severely diminished. How does a flaxen cord become so strong around a person's neck that the adversary has the power to bind a person with it forever? (2 Nephi 26:22). The answer is, with one bad choice at a time and with each choice, a lack of repentance. And lack of repentance means only one thing, suffering. What once seemed like freedom to choose turns out not to be freedom at all.

In his latest conference talk, President Oaks said that 'we can be cleansed by the process of repentance' (Oaks, 'Cleansed by Repentance', CR April 2019). As I contemplated this I realised that this cleansing is not only beneficial in regards to final judgment and eternal life but that it is also meant to be advantageous to us here and now. True and sincere repentance leads to forgiveness and forgiveness leads to freedom. Freedom from the effects of sin such as: shame, guilt, lack of self-respect, low self-esteem, depression, emotional pain, sorrow, anxiety, weakened personal and spiritual power and all negative emotions generated by sin. As I contemplated further about the freeing power of forgiveness I also came to understand how much more freedom we can gain as we willingly forgive others. Setting aside the fact that forgiving others is a commandment (D&C 64:9,10), I am certain this commandment was put into place for the benefit of the victim and not the oppressor or perpetrator. Some people erroneously believe that forgiving someone their offences means that our forgiveness absolves them from their actions and that means that they are forgiven. In reality, we do not possess the power to forgive anyone's sins. That power rests with God. Forgiving another their trespass against us means acknowledging their human frailties and freeing ourselves from the effects of their actions such as: resentment, hatred, bitterness, judgment, pain and all inflicted suffering. This can be a tall order however, where a very serious offence has taken place. How do you forgive physical and mental abuse by a spouse, sexual abuse by a family member, betrayal of a loved one, even murder of someone close to you?

I can testify to you that there is no pain bigger than the Atonement. When it is beyond our mortal capability to forgive another there is still hope. I have been through an experience in my life too personal to recount where forgiveness was beyond me. It was in that moment of suffering that I was given to know that through my faith in Jesus Christ and the power of His Atonement I could be gifted a forgiving heart. As I petitioned the Lord over and over, this gift was granted. I cannot adequately describe all the positive consequences that ensued as a result of this gift in my life and the lives of those around me, especially my children. The freedom it afforded me decades ago lives with me still. That gift of a forgiving heart has enabled me to forgive over and over the foibles of others;  from my friends to Church leaders to my children to strangers. It has taught me to let go and do so with compassion. This in turn has increased my capacity to love. 

As I listened to my friend agonise over her situation I wondered why we choose pain in our lives when we can have so much better through obedience to God's commandments. Sin is never as good as it appears to be. To those not vigilant enough, appearances are easily misunderstood. But gloss can dim overnight and reveal its ugliness and the devil calls for collection of debt all too soon. Compare his clutches of deceit and hatred to the loving arms of the Saviour who vigilantly watches over us waiting for the slightest act of obedience so that He might bless us. I am certain our pain is His pain and with everlasting mercy and kindness He stands with open arms to receive us and give us freedom from the wounds inflicted by our thoughtlessness, ignorance and waywardness. For has He not said, '....though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow....be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in the arms of my love." (Isaiah 1:18; D&C 6:20)

A GLIMPSE UPWARD

I have carried with me a sense of powerlessness my whole adult life. I know I did not bring this with me from my pre-existance because I know instinctly this is not who I am. I am not a powerless person yet the sense of powerlessness has been the bane of my life and has held me back from my fullest potential and greater success in this life.  I consider my spiritual life well developed but anything of temporal nature has been a struggle for me and fulfillment in many ways has eluded me. This sense of powerlessness has damaged my self-esteem and robbed me of self-belief to the point that I have many times felt I have been a failure in my life. Recently the frustration of this noose around my neck reached its peak.

I have known for some time that this weakness had come to me from many generations of my family who were poor oppressed European peasants, that had existed from the time of the feudal system to socialism, and who believed they could never rise above their station in life. I had seen this powerlessness perpetrated in my family throughout my childhood and early adulthood in Europe. I have known my family's thoughts, their false beliefs and their words of affirmations that invited suffering into the lives of my immediate family. From the time that I have received the Gospel in my life, I have not been able to understand why I was born into this lineage. I am the different one, the one that seeks and knows and loves God. The one that has largely departed from my roots. My recent sense of frustration over my life sent me to my knees where through bitter tears I spat out to God that I hated my family and all the generations I have come from; that I hated who they were and what they have saddled me with. I had never expressed such venomous thoughts before, to myself or to others, let alone to God. I begged to understand why I was sent into this family and why I carried their burden.  Within half an hour of my prayer, my heart and mind were flooded with immense understanding.

When the Saviour said  'my sheep hear my voice' (John 10:27) he was referring to those who are so spiritually advanced that they  recognise and wholeheartedly embrace the truth when it is presented to them. Bruce R. McConkie taught it is a spiritual gift that was developed in pre-existance. I was 16 when I sought and immediately accepted the Gospel into my life. I count myself as one of His sheep. What has all this got to do with my ancestors? It was given to me to understand that those who are His sheep are often sent to families who need a spiritual shepherd to help them with their unbelief. I came to understand that the sense of powerlessness in generations of my family had blinded them to a 'hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal' (Moroni 7:41); that what once was a temporal has now become a spiritual stumbling block.  I came to understand that no amount of saving ordinances which I can do here in the temple can do anything for them unless this sense of powerlessness was removed  so they can believe that they can rise to godhood.  I came to understand that my long held desire to bring souls unto Christ had more to do with generations of my family than with any other people I can yield influence over living here during my life time. I came to  understand that it is up to me to eliminate this feeling of powerlessness in my life and therefore eliminate it from generations past and generations to come. This made me understand that what we do and overcome in this life reverberates throughout generations that have been and the generations that are yet to come; that it reverberates through the genetic cord which binds us and unites us in a collective effort to rise to our potential; that what we achieve and overcome here in mortality echoes throughout eternity. I came to understand that we are one and that the power to lift one another to higher ground that we might all become co-heirs with Christ is one of the greatest tender mercies of the Lord.

Living by faith is a hard road. Glimpses into heaven such as these however make the journey bearable and the road illuminated. They propel us upward and above the world. They open our hearts to the witness of the plan of salvation and the reality of our real home. They make us know who we are; that we belong to Him who has loved us and made us free, to Him who has prepared heavenly mansions for our eternal abode; Him who has spiritually begotten us as His sons and daughters; Him who has made the immortality and eternal life of man possible; the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Everlasting Father, the Almighty God, the Son of Righteousness, the Great I Am, the Lord of Glory, the King of Kings, the Stone of Israel. All glory be His forever.

"Hast thou not known?

Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God,

the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth,

fainteth not, neither is weary? 

There is no fathoming of his understanding.

He giveth power to the faint;

and to them that have no might 

he increaseth strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, 

and the young men shall utterly fall:

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings as eagles;

they shall run, and not be weary;

and they shall walk,

and not faint."

- Isaiah 40:28-31

THE PRODIGALS

In my 40 odd years in the Church I have sat in many Sunday School lessons and heard the Parable of the Prodigal Son as found in Luke 15 rehashed many times. I have seen it looked at from the good son's perspective, from the Father's perspective and from the prodigal's perspective but all the views have missed the bigger picture which helps us to understand more fully what this parable is really about - Christ and His redemptive power. To me this parable highlights the intellectual genius of the Saviour more than any other because in it He covertly speaks about himself. The parable tells of a father who had two sons. The younger son grew restless and pleaded with the Father to grant him his inheritance so he could make his own way in the world away from his family. The father complied and gave him the monetary value that equaled his share of the assets he would have inherited upon his father's death. The son made some very unwise decisions and spent his inheritance on riotous living until he had nothing left and was reduced to living with swine and sharing their husks to assuage his hunger. Upon much reflection, he made a smart decision for once, to return to his father and beg a position as his servant knowing full well he could not receive another inheritance. However, his father welcomed him back into the family with compassion and joy and reinstated him as his son. When the older brother saw the celebration upon his brother's return he was outraged because he immediately assumed he would have to share his inheritance with his erring brother. The father however, assured him that his inheritance was intact and all that the father had belonged to him.

The father of this parable can in every way be symbolic of our Father in Heaven who respects our free agency and welcomes back anyone who returns to him with compassion, forgiveness and immense joy. The younger son represents us, the prodigals. We are on daily basis, bit by bit,  spending our inheritance through the sins of mortality and some of us will in the end, stubbornly, spend it all. The oldest and good son at first glance represents the penitent, covenant children who remain faithful and will inherit all the Father has.  However, the good son was also the first son so in a wider sense he represents the First Born of the Father, the Saviour himself, but with a huge difference. Whereas the parable's good son was reluctant and fearful he would have to share his inheritance with his brother, the Saviour, from the beginning, propagated and promoted His willingness to share the inheritance with his erring younger siblings. But the loving kindness did not end there. He offered His power to bring us back to the Father as well. The parable's good son never sought him who was lost, despite the kinship, despite the brotherhood, despite the Father's sorrow over his loss. What does this tell us about Christ and His willingness to lay down His life so He can bring us back through His atoning blood? Because of his perfect nature and the purity of His love, meaning there was no motive for self-advancement within Him, He was able to say: I will not only make it possible for them to come back, I will also share with them all that I have.

I have been spiritually faithful all my life, carefully guarding my inheritance, and whilst recognising that I, like everybody else am not free from sin, I had not fully resonated with the prodigal son until I realised that I, like him have made unwise decisions in my life, not exercising the power of foresight when I made them. Because every decision carries with it consequences and repercussions I have suffered much over the years because of them. For more years than I care to admit, these decisions had exhausted my feelings of self-respect and damaged my self-esteem perpetuating my lack of self-forgiveness. But the Atonement is infinite. It covers all sin and all foibles of mortality and its ensuing suffering, even that of bad decisions. And where there is repentance, there is forgiveness. Our sins have already been suffered for and forgiveness extended, in advance, so that we would not suffer beyond our repentance. Our repentance must include self-forgiveness because if it doesn't, we are in essence affirming that we do not fully believe what Christ can do and we do not fully accept the gifts of His Atonement. The Atonement is not only cleansing but also consoling (See "The Infinite Atonement" by Tad R Callister, p 205). Like a salve to a wound, it relieves the pain and heals the once broken, the once torn, the once damaged, the once suffering. To this I testify. Its' restorative power makes us whole and justifies us when we are judged according to our mortality. To be spiritually justified means to be once again aligned with God. It means all our sins, our bad choices and our unwise decisions can be swept away. It means the prodigals can return. It means they can once again be safe, be loved and never be lost again.

From the forgiving heart of Joseph Smith:
"At one point Oliver Cowdery had disassociated himself from the Church. Joseph was anxious that he repent and return. He instructed his clerk: 'I wish you would write to Oliver Cowdery and ask him if he hasn't eaten husks long enough'." (Smith, "Doctrines of Salvation", 1:227)

FORERUNNER

In the ancient world there were men who held an important job. They were required to go ahead of a travelling party to clear the path of fallen trees, rocks, undesirable persons or any obstacles that would prevent the travelling party from finishing their journey. They prepared the way. They were called 'forerunners'.

The most famous 'forerunner' to whom this title was applied symbolically was John the Baptist. Not much is known of John's personal life besides the role he played in the accomplishment of Christ's mission, but this much we do know. He was born to two elderly people according to God's promise to be 'the voice crying in the wilderness' to herald the arrival of one greater than he, as prophesied by Isaiah (40:3) and Malachi (3:1). When John the Baptist was two and a half years old a decree went out from Herod the king that all boy children two years and younger should be slain. John escaped this deadly fate because of the selfless courage of his father Zacharias who caused his wife Elizabeth to take him to the desert where he was raised to manhood. When Zacharias refused to disclose his hiding place he was slain by Herod's order, between the temple and the altar as he performed his temple duties (Matthew 23:35).  So apart from his miraculous birth and a rough upbringing what we know most from the scriptures is that John's life was solely focused on being the 'forerunner' of the long awaited Messiah. One might ask why the Son of God would need anyone to prepare the way before Him?

We know that first and foremost there needed to be a person with proper priesthood authority that could baptise Jesus, even though He needed no baptism. John had this priesthood power and authority. His father Zacharias would have been the high priest had that office not been corrupted earlier in Jews' history by making it a political appointment reserved primarily for those of wealth and prominence. Upon his death, John would have been the next reigning high priest. The leadership in Jerusalem, including the Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees and the Sanhedrin knew who John was and what his lineage was. Therefore, his teaching of the Saviour's coming, the gospel, the performing of miracles and baptising would have created a fertile environment for Jesus as He began his ministry. If there was no John beforehand to vouch for and testify of Him, the leadership in Jerusalem and indeed the Jewish population would not have recognized Jesus as having any authority or position as He was a carpenter without any acknowledged political or religious standing. John's ministry also provided a nucleus of faithful baptised believers from whom he could call His apostles. These were men already converted and ready to serve, hence their ability to walk away from their professions and families the instant the Saviour called them. Such was the power of John the Baptist, a martyr, who valiantly testified, taught and prepared the way and whom Jesus characterized as "a burning and a shining light" (John 5:35).

And here is an interesting fact. Even though Jesus and John were cousins and John testified of Him unrelentessly, it can be assumed that he didn't really know Him directly. The only time prior to the baptism that they would have been in close contact would be in Bethleham before they were 3 years old and before Herod's death decree. After that Jesus grew up in Nazareth and John was raised in Perea, on the east side of Jordan. In JST of John chapter 1, John says that he knew Him but was told by 'Him' who sent him to baptise that he shall know the Messiah when he sees the spirit descending upon Him following baptism (John 1:33, 34). He might have been told prior to baptism that it was his cousin but he might not have recognized Him when he saw Him without divine assistance. The Holy Ghost descending upon Jesus like a dove was both a confirmation to John of the Saviour's identity and a spiritual witness of His Sonship.

Here is the crux of this story. In my patriarchal blessing there is an interesting sentence that goes like this: "As you remain faithful to your trust, your guardian angels will never forsake you. They will go before you to 'prepare the way' and will be close to you and give you strength to resist evil." As I studied about John the Baptist this year my thoughts were cast upon this sentence and I realised I had 'forerunners' in my life. I wondered how much harder I would have struggled in my life had not an obstacle been removed from my path here and there, a temptation repressed , a hurtful incident prevented. I realised that I could very well have come this far more on the merits of my forerunners than on my own strength. If we are sincerely striving to accomplish our life's mission, our guardian angels will ensure that obstacles of any kind will not be keep us from accomplishing the purposes of our second estate. And one day when we look back on our lives we will plainly see just how much these guardian angels have helped us and we will be compelled to say as Elisha of old said to his servant who trembled at the sight of the approaching Syrians:

"Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they 

that be with them"

And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee,

open his eyes, that he may see.

And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man;

and he saw:

and behold, the mountain was full of horses and

chariots of fire....."

2 Kings 6:16,17

I attribute and credit some insight and phraseology in this blog post to my friend Larry Keeler who has enlarged my understanding of the scriptures many times.

DWELLER OF A TENT

In the first book of his record, Nephi mentions four different times that his father lived in a tent (1 Nephi 2:15, 1 Nephi 9:1, 1 Nephi 10:16, 1 Nephi 16:6). Considering how laborious engraving of the golden plates was, one cannot help but ask why would Nephi want to bother to impress upon us this minor and seemingly insignificant detail. Obviously, it wasn't insignificant to Nephi. Besides being a God fearing man, in 600 BC, his father Lehi was a rich and resourceful merchant successfully building a nest egg for his old age. By all accounts his future promised a life of ease and luxury but God had other plans. He revealed to Lehi what was coming to Jerusalem, a city whose wickedness was so great that God did not only send one prophet to call its' inhabitants to repentance but as many as seven. Lehi was one of those prophets. When he came perilously close to losing his life, he gathered his family, fled his home and found himself in the desert, living in a tent. So why Nephi's focus on the tent? Obviously it was to highlight the contrast of his father's cushy life (1 Nephi 2:4) on the outskirts of Jerusalem with his life after he had chosen to sacrifice everything to live according to God's will. As a result of this sacrifice,  he swapped his riches for a tent but he saved his family.

In Lecture Sixth of the Lectures On Faith, Joseph Smith points out that the ancient saints were able to endure any fate and any loss and even suffer most horrid deaths because they had the assurance that they were pursuing a course which was agreeable to the will of God. He stresses several times that those who have this knowledge have "the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation" (Lecture Sixth, para 7). What did this kind of faith do for Lehi? It enabled him to boldly complete one of the most demanding and difficult journeys, across waters he had never before travelled to a land he had never before seen. When we come to the point of such faith, we do not mind living in a tent because we then believe God when He says: "if you give up 'this little', I will give you 'this much'." In simple terms, if you sacrifice your all here and now, I will later give you something much better, even life eternal.

Once again, 'a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation' (Lecture Sixth, para 7). In the category of 'all things' required of us as a sacrifice would fall not only temporal goods but our self will, desires, appetites, intentions and agendas for personal gain in the form of power, honour and worldly praise and self advancement. Joseph Smith calls those who sacrifice all in pursuit of a life that is in accordance with God's will 'the favourites of heaven'. Imagine being one of God's favourites......

Perhaps when we have sacrificed all, joyfully, to pursue a life conducive to the will of God,  the power of faith will be so great within us that we will be like that faithful, bold and resourceful merchant from the outskirts of Jerusalem who stood on the banks of the Red Sea, with no ship in sight, proclaiming: 

"I have obtained a land of promise" (1 Nephi 5:5).

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Lehi Examines Plates by Joseph Franklin Brickey)