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Surrendering
our Minds to God
by H. Wallace
Goddard
She recounted
one miracle after another. Several miracles of friends raised up
to guide her spiritual journey. Uncounted “coincidences”
that hooked her up with the Lord and His church. Even opportunities
to testify to struggling members and non-members using truths unearthed
in her years of exploration in the church. Miracles littered the
landscape of her life. There was no denying that God was ministering
personally and nearly-constantly to her.
Yet she resisted
any suggestion that the Lord had ordained her for joy. “Joy
is for others. Not for me.” She resisted the possibility that
there might be anything but a hard life and terrestrial glory in
store for her. “I could never make it.”
For each of
us, God stands ready to part the Red Sea. Yet all we can think of
is tired feet and endless tracts of wilderness. God invites us to
warm ourselves at the burning bush. Yet the prospect of those sacred
moments is eclipsed by the chilly nights we spend alone.
The natural
mind is an enemy to God.
Not only does
the disappointment and pain of daily struggles occupy more of our
mental space than the miracles, such pain becomes the lens through
which we view all the events of our lives. The miracles are reduced
to a faint memory without personal meaning. The previous joys become
merely a reminder that we have come down from the mountain to a
valley of dull despair.
I think of
the friend who had been married for over 30 years with many remarkable
children. His family has blessed countless people. He is a man with
deep insight into the gospel of Jesus Christ. He hit a rough place
in his life. Unemployment. Uncertainty about the future. Discouragement
with life. Contention at home. One day he told me that his wife
was being unusually selfish and unhelpful lately. (The fact that
he was discouraged and prickly may have been a significant part
of the story.) He ruminated: “In fact, it seems that she has
been selfish for years. In fact . . .” he thought back over
the years “I’m not sure I ever loved her.”
Yikes! Today’s
troubles not only burden the present but can cause us to re-write
our entire history. A small bit of undigested potato can cause us
to re-cast our whole history with despair as its theme. The load
of joys and miracles is erased from the book of life and replaced
with a smudge. “Human beings are inevitably the arsonists
of their own happiness” (Robinson, 1992, Believing Christ,
p. 116). And our way of thinking provides the fuel for that conflagration.
I wonder if
our covenants with God are supposed to bind to His holy purposes
not only our actions but also our thoughts. When I am baptized,
I promise not only to serve fellow travelers but also to interpret
all of my experiences through the lens of faith. I commit to see
God and His goodness in all things. When I was sealed to Nancy,
I covenanted not only to take out household trash to curbside but
also to haul any unkind trash about her from my mind. I made a sacred
covenant to see and emphasize all that is good about my beloved
partner.
This very moment
there are seven pictures of Nancy on my desk. They range from when
she was one year old sitting with her brother Acel at Thorne studios
to the family pose in the Great Salt Lake to the picture of her
and me on the swing in the backyard with grandson Shad. Part of
the burden of faith is to choose to see, remember, and cherish the
sacred moments God has granted us. They should be the focal points
of our lives. In the mortal journey, we can collect and savor joy.
Clearly there are times when this will require some creative interpreting
of our lives. Creative interpreting is a pretty good way of understanding
faith.
When we make
covenants with God, we promise to give Him more than a little time
and our spare change. We promise Him everything, including our hearts—all
our heart, might, mind, and strength. Even our private thoughts
are to be filtered of ruminations and recriminations. Mortal assessments
are to be replaced with heavenly perspective. Our view of others
is informed
“by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge
the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile” (D&C 121:42).
There is nothing
that will enlarge our souls quite like pure knowledge, that view
of each other and our purposes that is filled with divine light.
So I collect
picture frames and I fill them with joy, hope, meaning, and celebration.
We can all frame our patriarchal blessings and hang them in our
hearts. We frame a picture of the struggling child and focus on
his finest moments. We frame a memory of a sacred experience and
guide our lives by its truth.
The file box
on my desk holds several hundred index cards each of them filled
with the discoveries of a given Sabbath. I am not quite sure how
to integrate all their truths into today, but I feel the blessing
of having been entrusted with so many souvenir rocks and cones along
the journey of life.
“Wherefore
seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily
beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before
us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who
for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising
the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against
himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds” (Hebrews
12:1-3, emphasis added).
Good counsel.
We can languish in the valley of doubt or we can look to Jesus in
our climb up the mountain of certitude for our rendezvous with God.
We can fill our minds with the perplexities of mortality or guide
our lives by recollected Truths and Joys.
Our jumble
of mortal experiences can be understood with the template of fretting
or the lens of faith. Either process will yield a coherent story.
One interpretation burdens us; the other blesses. The choosing is
ours.
We can see our lives as tragedies of failed character, as comedies
of errors, or as masses of confusion. We can write our lives’
stories with tragedy as the theme and fill them with pain and perfidy.
Or we can write our stories with God as the hero and growth as the
theme. When we write a book of the latter type, we ask ourselves,
“How could it have been any better?” And He whispers:
“It couldn’t have. I blessed you from start to finish
with just the right experiences to minister to your growth.”
Each day as
we make sense of our lives we add to the story line. We let in more
light or we groan in the darkness. Some of us cling to the miserable
but safely-familiar plot line. Some of us open our minds to see
His purposes. We all do it imperfectly. Yet, if we endure to the
End, it will be glorious.
Nested in a
familiar chapter is a stunning insight by a brilliant philosopher
named Alma:
O then, is not
this real? I say unto you, Yea, because it is light; and whatsoever
is light, is good, because it is discernible, therefore ye must
know that it is good; (Alma 32:35)
Only the Light
is real. May God help each of us find and cherish Light.
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