Some days,
Father, I cannot bear,
The absence of
Your touch.
I cannot wait
for Your embrace
That I have
missed so very much.
In this abyss
of worldly darkness
I stumble but
I fall into the arms of Him
Who lifts me
higher than I can go.
I fly to You,
Father, on my wings of faith,
I sail through
stormy skies,
Seeking for
Thy face.
Look Father,
no hands!
Only trust in
these strong arms
Of my
Saviour’s loving grace.
-
CATHRYNE ALLEN
“On the night
of the greatest suffering the world has ever known or will ever know, He said, “Peace
I leave with you, my peace I give unto you….Let not your hearts be troubled,
neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:26-27)
“I submit to
you that may be one of the Saviour’s commandments that is, even in the hearts
of otherwise faithful Latter-day Saints, almost universally disobeyed; and yet
I wonder whether our resistance to this invitation could be anymore grievous to
the Lord’s merciful heart.
“I can tell
you this as a parent. As concerned as I would be if somewhere in their lives one
of my children were seriously troubled or unhappy or disobedient, I would be infinitely more devastated if I
felt that at such a time that child could not trust me to help, or should feel
his or her interest were unimportant to me or unsafe in my care.
“In that same
spirit, I am convinced that none of us can appreciate how deeply it wounds the
loving heart of the Saviour when He finds that His people do not feel confident
in His care or secure in His hands or trust in His commandments.”
-
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Created
For Greater Things, A Collection of Inspiring Quotes
You come to me to dispel the darkness
And embrace me in the splendour of Your
light.
Even in the midst of Your Godly moments
You attend to the needs of my feeble heart.
I give my all to You who are
My wings of protection,
The Saviour of my soul,
The path to my eternal home.
There is
something very interesting about the exodus of the children of Israel from
Egypt. The Lord knew from the beginning that this mammoth undertaking was going
to have incredible difficulties from the start and I believe He used it to His
advantage to impress upon the children of Israel that He was the great
deliverer who gathers His own and that Moses was only an instrument in His
hands.
Thus He
instructed Moses to tell them this: "I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the
burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage,
and I will redeem you with a stretched
out arm, and with great judgments: And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall
know that I am the LORD your God which bringeth
you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land,
concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD. (Exodus 6:6-8)
And He
didn’t stop at this. He went on to say: “And the Egyptians shall know that I
am the Lord” (Exodus 7:5). His efforts to help humanity know that He is the
fountain of all salvation is incredibly prominent in the scriptures. Once I
counted His oft repeated declaration of “ye shall know that I am the Lord” in
the book of Ezekiel alone which came to 32 times and 25 times of the same
statement in reference to other nations than the House of Israel. I kept a list
of all the scriptural references. I find His inexhaustible efforts to impress
this upon us amazing. But I digress….
The first
time that Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh didn’t go so well. The Pharaoh
increased the Hebrews’ burdens and in one fell swoop destroyed their initial
hope of deliverance which immediately made them accuse Moses and Aaron of
wanting to kill them (Exodus 4:31; 5:20,21).
This lack of
faith snowballed to Moses who went back to the Lord to complain and ask where
the deliverance was that was promised (5:22,23). He then pointed out to the
Lord again, as he did in Midian, that he was of ‘slow speech’ so how can
Pharaoh believe and obey him? (Exodus 6:12,30) This, after he was apprised of
the difficulty of the mission before he left Midian, all the assurances he was
given of its eventual success and despite having a spokesman and the heads of
the tribes accompany him to the Egyptian court (6:14-27).
Sometimes I
don’t know who I feel more sorry for….us and our backsliding faith or the Lord
and His continual necessity to carry us in our frustrating humanity. His mercy,
tolerance and patience in impressing upon us that with Him nothing is
impossible astounds me.
As the sun bursts through the morning
light
It reveals You in the depths of my heart.
Gratitude overwhelms me
For Thy enduring patience
Of my inconsistent delight;
My erratic trust,
My feeble faith in Thy might.
I marvel You wait
In the shadow of my stubborn heart
And reach out to me in mercy to fulfil Thy
part.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: With God Nothing is Impossible by Greg Collins)
“On that
very night, the night of the greatest suffering that has ever taken place in
the world or that ever will take place, the Saviour said: “Peace I leave with you,
my peace I give unto you….Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let it be
afraid” (John 14:27).
“I submit
to you that may be one of the Saviour’s commandments that is, even in the
hearts of otherwise faithful Latter-Day Saints, almost universally disobeyed;
and yet I wonder whether our resistance to this invitation could be any more
grievous to the Lord’s merciful heart.
“I can tell
you this as a parent. As concerned as I would be if somewhere in their lives
one of my children were seriously troubled or unhappy or disobedient,
nevertheless, I would be infinitely more devastated if I felt that at such a
time that child could not trust me to help, or should feel his or her interest
were unimportant to me or unsafe in my care.
“In that
same spirit, I am convinced that none of us can appreciate how deeply it wounds
the loving heart of the Saviour when He finds that his people do not feel
confident in His care or secure in His hands or trust in His commandments.”
-
Elder
Jeffrey R. Holland, Created for Greater Things, p 56
In need I reach for heaven’s door,
To concede, in spirit, I am forever
poor.
I find Him waiting and knowing all,
No reprimand,
Just grateful I heard His call.
He took my heart into His hands,
The sacred balm, like honey,
soothed my aches.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: My Peace I Give Unto You by B. Laura Wilson)
