An Inch Underground

Carrying on with the two-day-old theme of things we don't notice, yesterday, Mom, Joe and I set out to find a cleanout pipe we could use to clear out a block in our sewer line. They had searched the grounds extensively the day before, but found nothing. Now, armed with a borrowed metal detector, we searched again, and found a cleanout pipe buried only one or two inches underground.

Though the pipe was so close to the surface that it took hardly any digging to find it, it was completely undetectable without the metal detector's help. So it probably is with a great many things. Perhaps the insight that we need to answer our life's most pressing question is in the scriptures, right under our noses, waiting for us to read the right verse. Maybe the spiritual strength and wisdom we need to overcome the trials in our lives are already within us, and we just need a small dose of adversity to bring that power to the surface. Whatever you're looking for in your life, it may sometimes feel like it's hopelessly beyond your reach, but maybe it's right at your fingertips, if you know where to look.

I don't want to pin this analogy down with anything too specific, but I'd bet that whatever it is you feel you're missing, God can help you find it, and it may not be as inaccessible as it feels. There are a few things I've been working on, and it often feels like what I want must be buried miles underground, but it could be that it's just an inch or two beneath the surface, and all I need to do is borrow a metal detector and find out where it is.

The metal detector in this analogy might be the scriptures, a Conference talk (which I should really get back to pretty soon), your Patriarchal Blessing, or any other form of guidance or inspiration from God. Divine inspiration can come from many sources and it can help us with any kind of problem we face, even the problems that seem to be unsolvable. We may not be able to find the solutions to our problems on our own, but God knows all the answers, and with His help, we can find them. We might be surprised to learn how close to the surface the solutions to our problems really are.

Update: The crummy thing is that the pipe we found wasn't the one that we needed after all, and the plumbing problem we have is going to require a costly procedure to solve. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to make sewer lines out of tar-coated paper or to plant an orange tree directly above that line, but whoever they were I think they were mistaken. The good news is that our leaky sewer line has fed and watered our orange trees for decades, which might explain why our orange trees are so huge and why their oranges taste so good. There's probably an analogy in there somewhere, too, but I'll save that for another day.

I wonder if it would be possible/a good idea to drill small holes into the new pipe so we could keep watering and fertilizing our orange trees every time we use the restroom. Then again, that sounds like it might be exactly the same kind of "good idea" that the other guy had when he planted these orange trees in the first place. I think I'd better get a second opinion before I search our garage for a power drill.