The Hope of God's Light

This morning, as I was searching through LDS.org, I found President Deiter F. Uchtdorf's April 2013 talk, The Hope of God's Light. As I read the talk again, these few paragraphs stood out to me.

Your Heavenly Father knows that you will make mistakes. He knows that you will stumble—perhaps many times. This saddens Him, but He loves you. He does not wish to break your spirit. On the contrary, He desires that you rise up and become the person you were designed to be. 

To that end, He sent His Son to this earth to illuminate the way and show us how to safely cross the stumbling blocks placed in our path. He has given us the gospel, which teaches the way of the disciple. It teaches us the things we must know, do, and be to walk in His light, following in the footsteps of His Beloved Son, our Savior. 

Yes, we will make mistakes. 

Yes, we will falter. 

But as we seek to increase our love for God and strive to love our neighbor, the light of the gospel will surround and uplift us. The darkness will surely fade, because it cannot exist in the presence of light. As we draw near to God, He will draw near to us. And day by day, the hope of God’s light will grow within us, “brighter and brighter until the perfect day.” 

To all who feel they walk in darkness, I invite you to rely on this certain promise spoken by the Savior of mankind: “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

There is a lot of darkness in the world, and many of us occasionally find ourselves walking in it. While not many of us are guilty of walking in the paths of sin, we each spend more time than we should in the darkness of confusion and despair. God's light allows our challenges and choices to become clear and to be seen in His eternal perspective. It can guide us, uplift us, and redeem us from our sins. It can help us understand what God wants us to become and help us along the path to fulfilling our potential.

I want to have God's light with me more, and to that end, I know what I have to do. Darkness and light cannot coexist. I must strive to remove all darkness - all despair, all doubt, and all sin - from my heart and replace it with the light of joy, faith, and virtue. Then my path will become more clear and my hope more sure. Then, I will be better prepared to successfully follow the path to becoming what God wants me to be.

My middle name, James, mean "supplanter" in Hebrew. To supplant something means to remove it and replace it with something else. For example, you can supplant weeds with flowers in a garden. I plan to supplant the darkness within me with the hope of God's light. I'm going to let God's light fill me until it becomes part of who I am. I'm going to let it change me until I have become what God and I want me to be.