Bonus Post: A Pitiful Repayment

Along the same lines as my official blog post of the day, I'm reminded that prayer is not just for telling God things. We also use prayer to ask God for blessings, including answers to questions, and now I wonder if telling God a little bit about our lives is part of how we repay God for telling us a little bit about His plan and the universe. At first, I thought that, of course, tell God a few things about ourselves is a poor way to repay Him for the light and knowledge He shares with us, let alone the miracles He does for us and the many other blessings He brings into our lives, but it may be that He loves us so much that He's happy with even the smallest amount of repayment.

I'm reminded of a scene in one of my favorite movies, which may even be my favorite movie. In a conversation at the beginning of the film, a character talks of an arrangement she and her son have with her mother, her son's grandmother: Grandma helps them pay their bills, asking only for pictures of the two of them in return.

In my opinion, this generosity reflects the generosity of God. In effect, they're each saying "In return for helping you overcome the biggest challenges in your life, I just want to be a part of your life and for you to be a part of mine."

It's not possible for us to fully repay God. There's a scripture in Mosiah that says something to that effect. But God's not asking for a full repayment. All He really wants in return for everything He does for us is for us to love Him and His children. Sometimes, that means visiting the sick and afflicted, sometimes that means telling God how our day went. Regardless of what form our expressions of love take, it's a small price to pay for our blessings, and even when it takes a measurable amount of sacrifice to show our love for God and others, God repays us in spades. That's also in Mosiah.

It's strange that, in some ways, God wants very little from us, and in other ways, He wants everything we can give Him. In the end, all He really wants from us is our hearts. Whether you see that as a huge sacrifice or a tiny one is up to you, but either way, it's a pitiful repayment for what God offers us in return.

Tell Him Anyway

There are several blog posts worth of insights from Elder Richard G. Scott's talk, Make the Exercise of Faith Your First Priority. The first one I want to blog about is about prayer.

Choose to converse with your Father in Heaven often. Make time every day to share your thoughts and feelings with Him. Tell Him everything that concerns you. He is interested in the most important as well as the most mundane facets of your life. Share with Him your full range of feelings and experiences.

It sometimes seems foolish to tell God things in prayer. Surely He already knows what challenges we face, how we feel, and what blessings we need and want. There's nothing we can say that God, being omniscient, doesn't know. Yet, God wants us to tell Him anyway. Why?

Maybe He just wants to talk with us, to have a conversation with us. We are, after all, His children. Even if you already know everything that's going on in your child's life, it can be rewarding to talk with them about it and bond with them over it.

Also, talking to God about things can help us put things into perspective. If we wouldn't bother God with some minor problem we're having, maybe we shouldn't let it bother us, either. On the other hand, it our problems do bother us, we can talk to God about them, and talking about them can bring us some peace. We may even be inspired in finding a solution to our problems when we bring them to God.

It astonishes me that the God of the whole universe wants to hear about my daily life. He wants to hear about my troubles and desires, as trivial as they may be. I'm even more astonished that the God of the whole universe wants to talk to me. I'm nobody. I'm beneath His attention. Or am I? Perhaps the reason God wants me to talk with Him, the reason He's willing to take time to listen to my feelings and troubles, is because He wants to convince me of how important I am to Him. He wants to spend time talking with us because He loves us. Even if the things you have to say seem trivial, He wants to hear it because if it matters to you, it matters to Him, if only because you matter to Him.

So, if you feel reluctant to talk to God because you don't think you have anything grand to tell Him, pray anyway. Even if all you can say is a brief anecdote about something that happened that day, which you know He already saw, tell Him anyway. If you think your problems are too small to be worthy of God's attention, tell Him anyway. If you think you're too small to be worthy of God's attention, talk to Him anyway. He wants to hear from you. He wants so badly to hear from you that He's willing to listen to anything you want to say to Him. I know from my own life that even when you're angry with Him, shouting at Him, He's glad to hear from you. Even if you have nothing but unkind things to say to Him, tell Him anyway. Praying has brought more peace to my soul than my angry words deserved.

I hope you never feel like you don't have anything worthy of telling to God. The purpose of prayer is not to inform God of anything He didn't already know. We couldn't do that if we tried. The purpose, or at least part of it, is to bond with God, to connect with Him, to communicate with Him so we can build and strengthen a relationship with Him. Lately, I haven't be praying regularly because I didn't feel like I had anything important enough to tell Him. Tonight, I'm going to pray to Him anyway. I may not have anything to say other than what He already knows, but now I know that He wants me to talk with Him anyway. So I will.

Tottering Toddlers

When I first heard President Deiter F. Uchtdorf's talk, Four Titles, I was so caught up in how well it answered a question I had, that I seem to have missed part of it. But when my mom watched it again recently, I heard the part that I had missed.

We have all seen a toddler learn to walk. He takes a small step and
totters. He falls. Do we scold such an attempt? Of course not. What
father would punish a toddler for stumbling? We encourage, we applaud,
and we praise because with every small step, the child is becoming
more like his parents. 

Now, brethren, compared to the perfection of God, we mortals are
scarcely more than awkward, faltering toddlers. But our loving
Heavenly Father wants us to become more like Him, and, dear brethren,
that should be our eternal goal too. God understands that we get there
not in an instant but by taking one step at a time. 

I do not believe in a God who would set up rules and commandments only
to wait for us to fail so He could punish us. I believe in a Heavenly
Father who is loving and caring and who rejoices in our every effort
to stand tall and walk toward Him. Even when we stumble, He urges us
not to be discouraged—never to give up or flee our allotted field of
service—but to take courage, find our faith, and keep trying.

This message gives me a lot of hope. I know that I stumble far more frequently than I should, and I often have to pray for God to be patient with me. I'm grateful to hear that God "rejoices in our every effort to stand tall and walk toward Him." I may not be very good at that, but I'm glad to know that He's pleased with me just for trying.

We all struggle. As President Uchtdorf said, we are very much like toddlers. No one understands that better than God does, and yet, no one loves us more than God does. He sees our weakness, but He also sees our potential, and He sees how hard we're trying to live up to it. I stumble frequently, but I'm still tottering forward, one baby step at a time. I'm growing slowly, but I'm growing, and I know that someday I'll grow up to become what I was born to be.

Stay in the Boat - Even in the Calm

It's probably about time that I got back to blogging from General Conference talks. In his Sunday Afternoon session talk, Stay in the Boat and Hold On!, Elder M. Russell Ballard shared a story of a rafting trip in which the first rule that was given by the rafting instructor was "Stay in the boat." This seemed a little bit odd to me. It seems to me that such a rule, while important, would hardly be necessary. Who in their right minds would willingly get out of a raft while rafting down rapids?

But then later in the talk, Elder Ballard quoted Brigham Young as having said:

It is in calm weather, when the old ship of Zion is sailing with a gentle breeze, [and] when all is quiet on deck, that some of the brethren want to go out in the whaling boats to have … a swim, and some get drowned, others drifted away, and others again get back to the ship. Let us stick to the old ship and she will carry us [safely] into the harbor; you need not be concerned.

Not all stretches of river have rapids, and not all rafting trips involve rapids at all. Sometimes, when life is good, people start to think that they're doing okay, that they can loosen up a little, that they can get out of the raft and enjoy a dip in the river. But in life, rapids come up unexpectedly. You never know when the next trial in your life or next test of your faith will come, so it is imperative that you stay in the boat of the gospel and hold on to gospel principles, so you can be ready whenever rapids come up.

But President Young's talk had nothing to do with rapids. There doesn't have to be life-threatening problems ahead to make leaving the "old ship Zion" a fatal mistake. Some people about whom President Young spoke simply drifted away. The gospel of Jesus Christ provides protection, and people can't tread water on their own forever. Even if you are a strong swimmer, and even if the water is calm, there is danger in leaving the safety of the boat. If you overestimate your strength and swim out just a little bit too far, you might not make it back to the boat in time.

The only safe way to make sure you're in the boat when you need to be is to never leave the boat at all. On a rafting trip, when you know that there's some risk of death, that's easy. But in real life, when the life that's at stake is a spiritual one, the risk and the danger can be harder to see. Some commandments can sometimes seem pointless. Some sins can sometimes seem safe. Some prophetic counsel can sometimes seem foolish or out of touch with the modern world, but the guidance of the living prophets could not be any more modern or any more wise or important. We need to hold on to their counsel like our lives depend on it, even when life is calm. There is danger, even in the calm, and we never know when the next set of rapids will appear. The only way to be sure that we're safe is to stay in the safety of the boat.

Good Boy, Good Man

In my mind, it's not a huge leap from a good boy to a good young man, or from a good young man to a good man. I don't know whether you'd put an 11-year-old with the boy group or the young men group, but the 11-year-old who wrote this letter to Sports Illustrated is definitely good.

When I read that letter this morning, I felt my faith in humanity being restored. I knew when I read this that there are good young men out there, and they're going to grow into good men, and they're going to change the world. If I'm ever in the position where I can hire the man who wrote this, I will, because I know that he has a great deal of moral courage and virtue. The world needs more young men like him.

Something I find especially impressive about this young man is something he mentions almost in passing. "I even wrote a speech for school that encourages boys of my generation to be gentlemen." "Boys of [his] generation" are a bunch of 10-to-12-year olds. A boy of age 11 (or younger!) wrote a speech encouraging other boys no older than he is to rise up and be gentlemen. I don't need to say that this young man will change the world. He's already doing it.

Unfortunately, I don't think Sports Illustrated will respond to this letter. It would be great if they did, but they won't. Personally, I think this letter would be a thrilling success if people started to emulate this young man. He wrote a letter voicing his moral opinions and shared that message with the world. This young man is awesome, and I want to be more like him.

I am fully convinced that this young man is going to grow to become a great man and that he'll do great and good things. His father is a good man, and his children will likely be good men and women, too. It's true that evil is spreading in the world, but good is spreading, too. This young man is playing an active and powerful role in the promotion of good. He is doing what I want to be doing. If he were any older than I am, I'd say that I want to grow up to be like him. But he is living proof that you don't have to grow up to be good. He's not a man yet, but he's a good young man, and he'll become a good man in time.

I'm glad he's a part of the rising generation, and I'm glad that he's changing the world.

God's Permission ≠ God's Will

As I was able to get most of my paper written yesterday (I'll finish off the last few paragraphs today), without ever mentioning the Book of Mormon or my personal beliefs, perhaps I actually had gotten that information out of my system yesterday morning and God doesn't actually want me to mention my religion in my essay. Then again, I probably shouldn't assume, because I was able to do something, that God didn't want me to do something else.

God often allows things to happen that aren't necessarily according to His will, and some people sometimes mistake His lack of interference for a sign that He actually willed the thing to happen. For example, I could go out and kill some random stranger, and I don't think that God would stop me. I'm should He could apply some Divine Intervention, but I don't think He would. God lets us make our own choices, even when those choices involve committing serious sins. That doesn't mean that God wants us to go out and commit sin - just that He won't stop us. As another example, the early settlers were "allowed" to kill native Americans, but I'm not sure if that was God's will or not, as they assumed it was.

There are many paths available to us, and because God respects our freedom to exercise our agency, He doesn't often "hedge up" the paths He doesn't want us to take. He may give us a nudge here or there, as He might have done for me yesterday, but He's not going to force us to act according to His will. So we shouldn't assume that because God permits something to happen, that means God wanted it to happen. I don't think it's God's will for anyone to commit sin, but He still lets it happen because He gave us that freedom of choice.

I chose to write a paper that doesn't mention the Book of Mormon. Perhaps that was a mistake on my part. I don't think it was a sin. It may be a display of cowardice, or it may be a display of caution. I'm too close to the issue to rightly judge. Anyhow, that is the choice I have made, and I highly doubt that I still have time to change it. It may be in accordance with God's will for me to have written the paper I wrote, but I won't assume so. I can't always tell what the Lord's will is. All I can do is try to learn it through the scriptures and modern revelation, including personal revelation, and try to act according to whatever light we have. I might have ignored a prompting this time. If I have, I'll try not to do it again.

America: The Promised Land

I'm currently in the process of writing a 1250 word essay about how a strong belief in God among the early settlers of this country has shaped the "American Ethos," which, if I understand the term correctly, refers to the values and principles held by most Americans or by America as a whole. In my paper, I state that most of the people that came to America felt that they had been brought here by the hand of God, and that God wanted them to be here. Some thought that this gave them the "divine right" to all of America's goods, and the natives were inconsequential. Others felt that America was a sort of "Promised Land" that God would allow them the privilege of living in so long as they lived worthily of the privilege.

A few things that I'm not putting in my paper, however, are that it was the native's Promised Land first, and that their patriarch, Lehi, prophesied that "there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord" (2 Nephi 1:6), which is a real shame, because that would be an awesome quote to include. Because of the Book of Mormon, I know that this continent is, indeed, the Land of Promise that many settlers felt that it was. I know that the settlers must have been brought into the land by the hand of God, as they felt they were. I also suspect that it was in line with God's will for the settlers to scourge the Native Americans, or Lamanites, because they had rejected God and become wicked, and were perhaps no longer worthy to live on this land of promise.

It's horrible that I have so much information that confirms so much of what the settlers believed, and I can't use any of it. Sure, I could say that "I believe" such and such, but I couldn't say why I believe it without getting my religion involved. Then again, this paper is all about the religion of the settlers, so why shouldn't I involve mine? It's not very professional. It would be hard to make it sound good. It might adversely affect my grade on this paper. But what have I got to lose? I've been struggling to write this paper. Maybe God has been hedging up my way because He wants me to write about what I know and believe on this subject. The settlers were right to think that they were brought here by the hand of God. They may even have been right in thinking that they were justified in attacking the natives. It's hard to excuse their brutality, but it wouldn't have been the first time God condoned the martial destruction of a wicked people.

It's hard for me to know when I should involve my religion in a paper or a class and when not to. I generally don't because religion usually doesn't have much to do with the subject matter and I don't want to make things awkward for people or spark any religious debates in class. I can't bring my religion into the picture without opening up a can of worms that may be better left closed. As I work on my essay some more this afternoon, I'll pray to guidance to know what to say and I'll pray that if God wants me to include references to the Book of Mormon, He'll continue to make it difficult for me as I try not to. I had hoped that writing this blog post would get this out of my system, but I'm afraid that it just primed the pump. I may have to take my chances, especially since I'm beginning to think that God wants me to.