The Real Force

Today is Star Wars Day. May the Fourth be with you. But one thing that's clear to me as I watch many of the Star Wars movies is that "the Force" has some strong similarities to the Spirit. They're both invisible, they both provide guidance and warnings, and they both require faith and trust to hear and follow. The main difference (besides the force jumps and telekinesis) is that the Holy Spirit is real, and the force is not. Even without telekinesis, I feel that I could benefit greatly from having the Spirit be a more active force in my life. The warnings it provides can save lives and even souls, and all I have to do is listen to it, and that starts with remembering that this "force" is real.

The Faith of the Canaanite

As I read through my new Gideon Mini-Bible yesterday, I came across an incident that stood out to me, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 15: 21-28, a Canaanite woman came to Jesus and asked Him to heal her daughter, but, surprisingly, He didn't. He didn't even answer her. Jesus' disciples began to be annoyed by the woman's pleadings and asked Jesus to do something about her, but He told them that He was there to help Israelites, not Canaanites. But this did not deter the woman. She continued asking for help, eventually getting this response from Jesus: "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." Now, not only was Jesus refusing to help the woman, He was insulting her and her people by comparing them to dogs.

This doesn't sound like the Jesus I know, or thought I knew. The Jesus I know is helpful and loving, or at the very least, polite. Even if, for whatever reason, He couldn't help the Canaanite woman, I would have thought that there was no way Jesus would have been so rude about it.

Yet, despite having be ignored, denied, and insulted, the woman did not become angry. She answered humbly: "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then, Jesus turned, saying, "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire."

Now, it's fairly easy too imagine that Jesus simply became exasperated by the woman's incessant requests and relented just to silence her. After all, He had once given a parable (I believe it's called the parable of the importune widow) in which He essentially recommends that course of action. In that parable, a woman asks an unjust judge for help, and he refuses, yet he gives in eventually as the woman annoys him by continually asking him for help. Yet, there are at least two things wrong with comparing Jesus to this unjust judge: one, Jesus doesn't want us to keep asking Him for things after He has already given an answer (just ask Martin Harris), and two, Jesus is not an unjust judge. He is a loving and merciful helper.

So, what gives? Why did Jesus deny the woman's request at first, citing some racist, exclusionary excuse, knowing that He would ultimately, gladly grant her request?

I think the answer is in His exclamation: "O woman, great is your faith!" Jesus wasn't being rude just for the sake of being rude or because He was having a bad day. He was testing her. He wanted her to prove that she had the faith, diligence, and patience to keep asking for aid, even when she wasn't getting it, or any positive response.

In life, we often go through hard times, and we ask God for help, and sometimes it seems like we aren't getting it. At those times, it's tempting to think that God has abandoned us and that He doesn't really care about us, when the reality may be that He's testing our faith and patience so He can reward us for being faithful and patient. There's a saying that the teacher is always silent during a test. Perhaps that includes the great Teacher being silent during the times when our faith is being tested. Sure, it still doesn't feel very good, but at least now we know that there's a reason for it.

So, if you go through a rough patch, and it seems like God isn't answering you, remember the Canaanite woman and impress the Savior with how faithful, diligent, and patient you can be. Keep asking, keep keeping the commandments, keep trying to do your best, and eventually, God will reward your faithfulness, whether He does so in this life or the next. It can be hard to be faithful, especially when God seems not to be faithful to us, but if we can learn anything from the Canaanite woman and, it's that God does hear and will eventually answer our prayers.

Another Gift - Useless Unless Used

This morning, the Gideons offered a gift of a pocket-sized copy of the New Testament plus Psalms and Proverbs. This was not the first time they made me this offer. In fact, I almost turned them down because I already had two such books at home, and those were just the ones from the Gideons, not counting the several copies of the scriptures I got through my church. Yet, as I thought about the two Gideon New Testaments sitting on the shelf at home, I realized that they weren't doing much good for me just sitting there, so I took the small book the Gideons offered me this morning, I read from it, and I profited by it.

None of the scriptures available to us do us any good unless we read them, and having scriptures on your shelf at home isn't as useful as having scriptures on hand. Theoretically, I already had a copy of the scriptures on hand, on my phone, but those scriptures, though ever-handy, are often ignored except in lessons or in family scripture study. Having a paper copy of the New Testament in my front pocket reminded me to actually read it, and it was when I read it that I felt the Spirit, not just when I had it in my pocket.

It may not be convenient to carry paper scriptures around, but that's actually one of the benefits. The inconvenience of those scriptures reminds us of their existence, and their single-purpose nature reminds us that the only reason we carry them is to read them occasionally. Unlike the other two, I think I might keep this Gideon mini-Bible on hand for a while, and read from it from time to time. I've already gained an insight and a portion of God's Spirit from it. I think it'd be wise for me to continue to carry a small set of scriptures whose only purpose is for me to occasionally read them. Then, maybe I actually will.

Treating Sin

At the start of Elder Dale G. Renlund's talk Our Good Shepherd, he drew a few parallels that can teach us important things about sin and Jesus' attitude toward it and us. As you might have guessed by the title of his talk, Elder Renlund compared Jesus to a good shepherd and us to His sheep. The unique part of his analogy is in his comparing sin to a disease, using ideas from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables to explore how a shepherd might react to an ill or blemished sheep.

As Elder Renlund put it:

As the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ views disease in His sheep as a condition that needs treatment, care, and compassion. This shepherd, our Good Shepherd, finds joy in seeing His diseased sheep progress toward healing.

Our Good Shepherd loves His sheep, diseased though we are. And mostly because of His love for us, He hates sin because it is harmful to us. Yet, even though we are sinful, He doesn't hate us. He hates the sin, but loves the sinner. He hates the disease, but loves His sheep. His joy is to help us become free from sin, to be cured and healed, so we can return into our Heavenly Father's presence.

I'm not sure if I've ever thought of sin this way, but it offers an interesting perspective into the nature of sin and why Jesus wants us to be rid of it. Our sins are much like a disease, infecting and weakening our souls. No wonder Jesus would rush to our aid to help us be rid of it.

Vigilance

I've learned that battling Satan isn't really about fighting him. Fighting him is fairly easy. Many of his temptations can be overpowered by simply deciding to fight it. It's true that some of his temptations are difficult to resist, but in my opinion, the real fight has more to do with vigilance than strength of will. Satan, knowing that he is weaker than we are, uses stealth and trickery to try to weaken and defeat us before we even realize that he's there. Often, he's nothing more than a nagging thought in the back of our mind or a lingering negative emotion. Such things typically escape our notice, and are thus allowed to fester and poison us until Satan thinks we've been weakened enough to try to tempt directly. The trick, then, is to take notice of Satan's subtle influence and use our strength to our advantage, forcing him out of our minds before he can get a proper foothold. If we let him linger, he can weaken us, but if we oust him quickly enough, we can maintain our strength and our advantage in any spiritual conflict against him. The devil is sneaky, and he knows what strategies give him the best chance of winning, but his best chance lies in avoiding direct conflict until he has given himself the upper hand. We can rob him of that advantage by being vigilant and dealing with him directly as soon as he makes his first move. Don't let the devil sneak into your mind. Be watchful and force him out.

The Most Important Part of the Lesson

If I teach nothing else tomorrow, I want to at least teach the kids that hymns can help crowd out unworthy thoughts. I feel that that is very important. The ability to use hymns to resist temptation is a skill that everyone should develop, most particularly the youth of the church. I'll probably end up sharing President Packer's analogy about one's mind being a stage that can only have one actor on it at a time, and I'll certainly have one of the children read the President Packer quote the lesson shares, if nothing else. This may not be the most interesting tidbit, and it certainly won't be the most fun part of the lesson (unless I think of some activity that could go along with that part of the lesson), but I think it's the most important hymns-related message I could share with the kids. They are going to encounter temptation at some times in their lives, as if they don't already encounter it, and when they do, it be great if they had learned a trick or two for how to resist it, and humming or singing a hymn is just such a trick. If even only one of those children hears, remembers, and benefits from that message, it will have been work taking the time to teach it.

Songs and the Spirit

I'm teaching the lesson in Primary this week, and the lesson is on Emma Smith compiling the first hymnbook. This is an interesting topic for me because I love hymns and the singing of hymns. What I love most the hymns is how well they invite the Spirit. Singing hymns is much like saying prayers. In fact, some hymns, like How Great Thou Art, literally are prayers. In addition, most hymns, if not all, have doctrinal messages in them, of which the Holy Spirit can testify. Hymns also invite the Spirit through the music itself. I don't know what it is about music, even secular, instrumental music, but it touches the soul in a very special way, often inspiring the same feelings and attitudes that attract the Spirit.

What makes this lesson challenging for me is its emphasis on Emma Smith. I don't know much about her, and some of what I've heard, I don't think I'd share in a Primary lesson (even though some of the kids have already heard it, too). I don't think I'll talk about Emma except to say that God asked her to make a hymnbook and then ask why He would want her to do that. Hopefully, one of the kids will answer that hymns are important, and then we can go from there.

Of the many good lessons we can learn from and about hymns, it'll be tough to decide which ones to prioritize. Is it important, for example, to share that sacred hymns and Primary songs can crowd out unworthy thoughts, but depending on how many students are listening at that point, it may be more productive to have a hymn-related activity first, like singing one hymn to the tune of another. That may help the youngsters to focus and thus actually get something out of the lesson. But I don't want to spend all our times on activities, unless those activities also teach important lessons, so I'll probably need to find some balance between the two.

This might be a tricky lesson. Fortunately, the testimony part should be fairly easy. I love hymns because the hymns can help us attract the Spirit. Come to think of it, maybe it'd make sense to sing an opening hymn to attract the Spirit before the lesson. For this lesson, I think I'm going to need it.