this post should take four minutes to seven minutes to read from start to finish.
"Here your most crucial challenge, once you have recognized the seriousness of your mistakes, will be to believe that you can change, that there can be a different you. To disbelieve that is clearly a satanic device designed to discourage and defeat you.
When you get home tonight, you fall on your knees and thank your Father in Heaven that you belong to a Church and have grasped a gospel that promises repentance to those who will pay the price. ... Repentance is simply the scriptural invitation for growth and improvement and progress and renewal. You can change! You can be anything you want to be in righteousness.
... You can change anything you want to change, and you can do it very fast. ... It takes exactly as long to repent as it takes you to say, “I’ll change” and mean it. Of course there will be problems to work out and restitutions to make.
You may well spend indeed you had better spend the rest of your life proving your repentance by its permanence. But change, growth, renewal, and repentance can come for you as instantaneously as for Alma and the sons of Mosiah. ... Do not misunderstand. Repentance is not easy or painless or convenient.
... But only Satan, who dwells there, would have you think that a necessary and required acknowledgment is more distasteful than permanent residence. Only he would say, “You can’t change. You won’t change. It’s too long and too hard to change. Give up. Give in. Don’t repent. You are just the way you are.”
That, my friends, is a lie born of desperation. Don’t fall for it. ... Immerse yourself in the scriptures. You will find your own experiences described there. You will find spirit and strength there. You will find solutions and counsel. Nephi says, “The words of Christ will tell you all things . . . ye should do” (2 Nephi 32:3).
Pray earnestly and fast with purpose and devotion. Some difficulties, like devils, come not out “but by prayer and fasting.” Serve others. The heavenly paradox is that only in so doing can you save yourself. Be patient. As Robert Frost said, with many things the only way out is through. Keep moving. Keep trying. Have faith.
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"Worry doesn't help tomorrow's troubles but it does
ruin today's happiness." |
... Several decades ago an acquaintance of mine left a small southern Utah town to travel to the East. He had never traveled much beyond his little hometown and certainly had never ridden a train.
But his older sister and brother-in-law needed him under some special circumstances, and his parents agreed to free him from the farm work in order to go.
They drove him to Salt Lake City and put him onto the train—new Levi’s, not so new boots, very frightened, and eighteen years old. There was one major problem, and it terrified him.
He had to change trains in Chicago. Furthermore, it involved a one-night layover, and that was a fate worse than death. His sister had written, carefully outlining when the incoming train would arrive and how and where and when he was to catch the outgoing line, but he was terrified. And then his humble, plain, sun-scarred father did something no one in this room should ever forget.
He said, “Son, wherever you go in this Church there will always be somebody to stand by you. That’s part of what it means to be a Latter-day Saint.” And then he stuffed into the pocket of his calico shirt the name of a bishop he had taken the time to identify from sources at Church headquarters.
If the boy had troubles, or became discouraged and afraid, he was to call the bishop and ask for help. Well, the train ride progressed rather uneventfully until the train pulled into Chicago. And even then the young man did pretty well at collecting his luggage and making it to the nearby hotel room that had been prearranged by his brother-in-law.
But then the clock began to tick and night began to fall and faith began to fail. Could he find his way back to the station? Could he find the right track and train? What if it was late? What if he was late? What if he lost his ticket? What if his sister had made a mistake and he ended up in New York? What if? What if? What if?
Without those well-worn boots ever hitting the floor, that big, raw-boned boy flew across the room, nearly pulled the telephone out of the wall, and, fighting back tears and troubles, called the bishop. Alas, the bishop was not home, but the bishop’s wife was.
She spoke long enough to reassure him that absolutely nothing could go wrong that night. He was, after all, safe in the room, and what he needed more than anything else was a night’s rest. Then she said, “If tomorrow morning you are still concerned, follow these directions and you can be with our family and other ward members until train time. We will make sure you get safely on your way.”
She then carefully spelled out the directions, had him repeat them back, and suggested a time for him to come. With slightly more peace in his heart, he knelt by his bed in prayer (as he had every night of his eighteen years) and then waited for morning to come. Somewhere in the night the hustle and bustle of Chicago in the 1930s subsided into peaceful sleep.
At the appointed hour the next morning he set out. A long walk, then catch a bus. Then transfer to another. Watch for the stop. Walk a block, change sides of the street, and then one last bus. Count the streets carefully. Two more to go. One more to go. I’m here. Let me out of this bus. It worked, just like she said.
Then his world crumbled, crumbled before his very eyes. He stepped out of the bus onto the longest stretch of shrubbery and grass he had ever seen in his life. She had said something about a park, but he thought a park was a dusty acre in southern Utah with a netless tennis court in one corner. Here he stood looking in vain at the vast expanse of Lincoln Park with not a single friendly face in sight.
There was no sign of a bishop or a ward or a meetinghouse. And the bus was gone. It struck him that he had no idea where he was or what combination of connections with who knows what number of buses would be necessary to get him back to the station. Suddenly he felt more alone and overwhelmed than he had at any moment in his life.
As the tears welled up in his eyes, he despised himself for feeling so afraid but he was, and the tears would not stop. He stepped off the sidewalk away from the bus stop into the edge of the park. He needed some privacy for his tears, as only an eighteen-year-old from Southern Utah could fully appreciate. But as he stepped away from the noise, fighting to control his emotions, he thought he heard something hauntingly familiar in the distance.
He moved cautiously in the direction of the sound. First he walked, and then he walked quickly. The sound was stronger and firmer and certainly it was familiar. Then he started to smile, a smile that erupted into an audible laugh, and then he started to run. He wasn’t sure that was the most dignified thing for a newcomer to Chicago to do, but this was no time for discretion.
He ran, and he ran fast. He ran as fast as those cowboy boots would carry him—over shrubs, through trees, around the edge of a pool. Though hard to you this journey may appear, Grace shall be as your day.
The sounds were crystal clear, and he was weeping newer, different tears. For there over a little rise huddled around a few picnic tables and bundles of food were the bishop and his wife and their children and most of the families of that little ward. The date: July 24, 1934.
The sound: a slightly off-key a cappella rendition of lines that even a boy from Southern Utah could recognize.
Gird up your loins; fresh courage take;
Our God will never us forsake;
And soon we’ll have this tale to tell—
All is well! All is well!
[“Come, Come, Ye Saints, Hymns, 1985, no. 30]
It was Pioneer Day. The gathering to which he had been invited was a Twenty-Fourth of July celebration. Knowing that it was about time for the boy to arrive, the ward had thought it a simple matter to sing a verse or two of “Come, Come, Ye Saints” to let him know their location.
Elisha, with a power known only to the prophets, had counseled the king of Israel on how and where and when to defend against the warring Syrians. The king of Syria, of course, wished to rid his armies of this prophetic problem. So and I quote:
Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about.. . . an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. [2 Kings 6:14–15]
If Elisha is looking for a good time to be depressed, this is it. His only ally is the president of the local teachers quorum. It is one prophet and one lad against the world. And the boy is petrified. He sees the enemy everywhere—difficulty and despair and problems and burdens everywhere.
The bus is gone and all he can see is Chicago. With faltering faith the boy cries, “Alas, my master! How shall we do?” And Elisha’s reply? “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them” (2 Kings 6:15–16).
“They that be with us?” Now just an Israelite minute here. Faith is fine and courage is wonderful, but this is ridiculous, the boy thinks. There are no others with them. He can recognize a Syrian army when he sees one, and he knows that one child and an old man are not strong odds against it. But then comes Elisha’s promise:
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 round about Elisha. [2 Kings 6:16–17]
In the gospel of Jesus Christ you have help from both sides of the veil, and you must never forget that. When disappointment and discouragement strike—and they will—you remember and never forget that if our eyes could be opened we would see horses and chariots of fire as far as the eye can see riding at reckless speed to come to our protection. They will always be there, these armies of heaven, in defense of Abraham’s seed.
I close with this promise from heaven.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you;And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. [D&C 78:17–18]
... The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours. [D&C 78:18] Oh yes, “We’ll find the place which God for us prepared.” And on the way “We’ll make the air with music ring, Shout praises to our God and King; Above the rest these words we’ll tell—All is well! All is well!” (“Come, Come, Ye Saints,” Hymns, 1985, no. 30)."
If you would like to read the whole Devotional either now or in your own time, here is the link below.
Stay Tuned until next time.
