God Is My Friend, In Him I Shall Find Comfort

Well, 2014 is over.

This past year, combined with my opportunity to teach a D&C course at BYU this semester, have caused me to spend some time thinking about years of our lives, including years that we would not always wish to repeat.  In my study of the Doctrine and Covenants for this upcoming course, I came across just one such year in the Prophet's life:  1832.  That probably isn't the year most of you would think about.  Most of us would say something like 1834 and Zion's Camp, 1837 and the Kirkland Apostasy, 1838-1839 and the imprisonment in Liberty Jail, or 1844 and the Martyrdom.  It's true, he went through more years that none of us would wish upon our worst enemies, let alone wish to live through ourselves.  But as I've been studying, I have found 1832 to be especially difficult and especially applicable for a number of reasons.

1832 got off to a remarkable beginning.  At a January conference, Joseph Smith was sustained as the President of the High Priesthood, the first step in creating the Church's original First Presidency.  The Church's presiding quorum was further strengthened on March 8, 1832 when Jesse Gause and Sidney Rigdon were called to serve as counselors in the First Presidency, providing the Prophet with duly called and ordained counselors to assist him with the growing administrative burdens of the Church.  These must have been significant moments for the Prophet, who had long felt as though he had had to bear too much of the burden of the Church on his own shoulders.  Further, in February, the Prophet and Sidney Rigdon had received the vaulting visions of the degrees of glory, including moving visions of the Father and the Son and those who would inherit the Celestial glory.  Around March 1, the Prophet received another grand revelation instructing the leaders of the Church on how they could begin to prepare for Celestial glory.  At the end of this revelation came the comforting words, "Be of good cheer, for I will lead you along.  The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours.  And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more" (D&C 78:18-19).  This was a period of intense revelation, with Joseph even receiving a revelation teaching him a few words from the pure language of Adam ("Sample of the Pure Language of Adam, circa March 4-20, 1832, Joseph Smith Papers Documents, 2:213-215).

Placing myself in the Prophet's shoes, I know how I would have felt after the beginning of this year.  I would have thought to myself, "Everything is coming together.  The dark and difficult times of earlier days are finally in the past."  With this kind of a beginning to a year, how could things possibly go poorly?  But beginning at the end of March, the Prophet began to experience some difficult days.  On the evening of March 24-25, Joseph and Sidney were dragged from their homes and tarred and feathered and nearly killed by a violent mob.  This incident made it a perfect time for the new First Presidency to fulfill a commandment from the Lord to visit the Saints in Independence, Missouri, a trip of nearly a thousand miles.  But when Joseph arrived in Missouri, all was not right.  Being members of a new church, and being separated by a thousand miles from the Prophet, some of the leaders in Missouri had begun making decisions that ran contrary to revelation, creating contention.  The First Presidency had arrived just in time.  Meeting with the Saints, "All differences [were] settled and the hearts of all [ran] together in love" (Minutes, April 26-27, 1832, Joseph Smith Papers Documents, 2:232).  The conference was capped by a revelation that encouraged the Saints to forgive one another and to henceforth "refrain from sin" that they might receive the promises of the Lord (D&C 82:2).

After resolving the difficulties in Missouri and receiving one more short revelation (now D&C 83), Joseph and the First Presidency started back home toward Ohio.  In Indiana, a stage coach accident resulted in Newel K. Whitney breaking his leg.  While other leaders continued on home to Ohio, Joseph stayed behind with Brother Whitney for several weeks.  During this time he learned that the difficulties he thought had been resolved in Missouri had continued, and he went through a period of intense loneliness, anxiety, and reflection.  Unlike the period from January through April, wherein he had received many revelations (including one of his most significant to date), beginning in May, the summer of 1832 appears to have been a time when the Prophet was not receiving many revelations (or at least does not appear to have recorded them).  He wrote a letter to Emma that gives us some insights into what he felt.

"My situation here is a very unpleasant one although I will endeavor to be contented, the Lord assisting me.  I have visited a grove which is Just back of the town almost every day where I can be secluded from the eyes of any mortal and there give vent to all the feelings of my heart in meditation and prayer.  I have called to mind all the past moments of my life and am left to mourn and shed tears of sorrow for my folly in suffering the adversary of my soul to have so much power over me as he has had in times past.  But God is merciful and has forgiven my sins and I rejoice that he sendeth forth the Comforter unto as many as believe and humble themselves before him.  I was grieved to hear that Hyrum had lost his little child.  I think we can in some degree sympathize with him, but we must all be reconciled to our lots and say the will of the Lord be done. . . . Sister Whitney wrote a letter to her husband which was very cheering [to him].  Being unwell at that time and filled with much anxiety, it would have been very consoling to me to have received a few lines from you, but as you did not take the trouble, I will try to be contented with my lot, knowing that God is my friend, and in Him I shall find comfort.  I have given my life into His hands.  I am prepared to go at His call. I desire to be with Christ.  I count not my life dear to me, only to do His will" (Joseph Smith to Emma Smith, June 6, 1832, Joseph Smith Papers Documents, 2:249-251).

After a period where things had seemed so promising and so grand, with friends finally there to help him bear his burdens, Joseph had suddenly found himself in a place of loneliness, sorrow, and discouragement.  Further, silence seemed to have replaced the grand revelations of early 1832, the last revelation having warned that where much was given "much is required" and those who sinned "against the greater light" would "receive the greater condemnation" (D&C 82:3).  And so Joseph was left to wonder and to ponder, to mourn and to shed tears of sorrow for his past follies.  In his place, I know I would have wondered if perhaps God's silence was an indication that He had forsaken me because of my sins.  Even after he returned home, Joseph continued to ponder over his past sins and the Lord's forgiveness, a fact borne out in his 1832 Account of the First Vision.

But after a summer of repentance and contemplation upon the calling to which he had been called, the revelations again began to flow.  On August 29, he received a revelation for John Murdock (now D&C 99), whose twins Joseph and Emma had adopted following the death of Murdock's wife.  And then in late September, eight years to the day that Joseph had first been visited by Moroni, came the revelation containing the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood and a witness that contained within that higher priesthood, of which Joseph was the President, was "the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God" (D&C 84:19).  October brought another trip, this time to New York City, while November brought somewhat less stressful administrative meetings and communications with the Saints in Missouri.  And finally, December brought a flurry of revelations, including one that the Prophet referred to as "an olive leaf which we have plucked from the tree of Paradise" and "the Lord's message of peace to us" (Joseph Smith to W. W. Phelps, January 11, 1833, Joseph Smith Papers Documents, 2:365).  This revelation seemed to sum up the Prophet's summer, in the words, "Ye shall call upon me while I am near--Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.  Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is expedient for you" (D&C 88:62-64).

Looking at this history, we begin to see that 1832 was a year where the Prophet was tutored about how to draw near to the Lord, especially in the moments when (for no apparent reason), He seems to be distant from us.  Although Joseph had gone through periods of repentance and silence from heaven before (such as the period between the First Vision and Moroni's first visit, or the Summer and Fall of 1828 when the plates had been taken from him due to the lost manuscript), it does not seem that he had gone through moments like this when he had experienced God's temporary distance having not withdrawn himself from God's presence.  In 1832, Joseph had to learn that sometimes as we seek to draw near to the Lord, He will withdraw Himself just a distance so that we can learn to seek His presence with greater fervency and enjoy the comfort of His voice and presence with greater pleasure.  Sometimes He will withdraw a measure, just to see if we will do as the Prophet did and redouble our efforts and diligence to find Him.  As the Prophet found, there are always more opportunities for us to repent than we readily see, and God is indeed a merciful Friend and Father.

In these moments when it seems that God has withdrawn Himself a measure from us, we can be encouraged by the Prophet's example of repentance.  But we can also be cheered by the knowledge that as we seek Him diligently, these summers of silence will turn into autumns of revelation, divine direction, and ultimately divine companionship.  "Therefore, sanctify yourselves that your minds become single to God, and the days will come that you shall see him; for he will unveil his face unto you, and it shall be in his own time, and in his own way, and according to his own will" (D&C 88:68).  So it was for the Prophet of the Restoration in 1832, and so it will be for you and me.

Brett

God Will Feel After You

Sometime after the crucible of Liberty Jail, the Prophet Joseph met with the Twelve in Nauvoo and imparted the following wisdom that John Taylor remembered in later years:  "You will have all kinds of trials to pass through.  And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God, and (said he) God will feel after you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God" (John Taylor, Deseret News Semi-Weekly, August 21, 1883, page 1).  This is one of those sobering truths (Elder Maxwell referred to them as "wintry doctrines") that we don't really like to talk about all that often.  It is the kind of doctrine that scares us to death and causes us, like Pollyanna, to reach out for some of the happier doctrines of the Gospel.  Hearing this, we are at times tempted to step back.  But even as we fear that doctrines like this might cause us to shrink and to fail to drink out of our own bitter cups, we are compelled to admit that truths such as this sanctify our souls and prepare our hearts for salvation.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this doctrine, is that these kinds of trials almost always find their way into our lives in the moments when we are striving our hardest for righteousness.  They come to us, not in spite of our righteous efforts, but directly because of our righteous efforts.  In the very moments when we are perhaps most "qualified" (I use this term loosely) to enjoy the presence and blessings of the Lord, He seems to withdraw those very things from our lives.  These moments throw our minds and hearts into chaos, almost always causing us to ask ourselves why the very God we were trying to serve had forsaken us.

But it is there, in our agony and in our grief, that these trials begin their divine work of sanctifying and expanding our souls, drawing us nearer to the very God whom, for a small moment, we felt had forsaken us.  For it is in our agony that we are brought to our knees, gaining a power to pray, to plead, and to commune with the Holy One that we had never possessed before.  It is there, in our grief, that we begin to learn the meaning of the words "thy will be done," and just how hard it can be to place that holy phrase upon the altar of sacrifice.  Whereas early in these trials we begin to feel that God has taken us to the very edge and limits of our faith, having submitted our will to God, we begin to sense the expanding circumference of the faith we had once felt was shaken.  We find that we have given our feeble and broken hearts more fully to God because He was the only One with the power to mend them.  While at points we may have felt as though the wrenching was without purpose, we come to understand that what He was doing was operating upon a heart that had actually been broken and struggling long before the painful procedure had begun.

This wintry doctrine is, in reality, the very essence of the doctrine of Christ.  Though we almost always ask if there isn't an easier way, it provides the means whereby the Lord and His atonement begin to come more fully into our lives.  Far from signaling a withdrawal of his presence and blessings from our lives, these are the very moments in which He is closest to us.  Note that the Prophet declared that in these moments He would feel after us.  What a tender blessing, to know that the very God of Heaven knows you, knows exactly what you need, and will feel after you to provide the needed blessing!

Opposition in All Things

Michelangelo, "Expulsion from the Garden of Eden"

One of the interesting aspects of the gospel is its paradoxical nature.  After having been expelled from the Garden of Eden, Eve declared, "Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient" (Moses 5:11).  Lehi made a similar statement, "For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.  If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.  Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.  Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation.  Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God" (2 Nephi 2:11-12).

Many times in our lives we are tempted by the thought of a world without death, corruption, misery, and insensibility.  How could such a world possibly be a bad idea or a bad place to live?  Given the pains and sorrows that we experience in this life, who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to leave all those things behind?  But consider what we would have to sacrifice in order to survive in that world.  In order to avoid the moments of misery, we would have to sacrifice our moments of joy.  In order to avoid the pain of death, we would have to sacrifice the truly moving and joyous moments of life.  Considering this price, not one of us did or would choose to live a world free from misery and pain, because the absence of joy and growth is far too high a price for the absence of misery and pain.  We have experiences where we fall in order that we might have experiences where we learn to be lifted up and rise.  How could we ever have the blessing of hearing the Savior admonish and empower us to "take up thy bed" (Matthew 9:6) if we never had moments where we struggled to rise and walk.

While there are certainly times in our lives when we would wish that we could not feel pain, the moments of joy and happiness far outweigh the moments of pain in terms of their depth, power, and lasting influence in our lives.

"Without Me Ye Can Do Nothing"

It's been an interesting week, full of a few ups, several downs, and a number of important self-realizations, most of which I will keep to myself.  After a week of not being able to sleep at all during the nights, I'm once again able to rest at nights and be productive during the days.  For this, I am extremely grateful.

I wanted to share one realization that came to me.  It was the realization that the Savior is exactly right when He declares, "Without me ye can do nothing" (John 15:5).  When he says "nothing" He means "nothing."  During some recent challenges, I found myself trying to make personal progress and let go of some things entirely on my own.  Too often we try to move beyond the hurts in our lives all on our own.  We try to make things right by shear force of personal effort.  In a sense, we try to save ourselves.  But this life does not work that way.  Sometimes the hurt runs too deep, and thank goodness it does.  In the very process of hurting, we are brought to the inevitable conclusion that "Without Him we can do nothing."  And so our pains and our struggles cause us to reach out to others and most importantly to reach up to Him.  Then, like the wounded souls He healed so often, He lays His hands upon us and restores us to strength and health and comfort.

I was not numbered among the ten lepers, nor the paralytic man lowered through the ceiling.  I was not among the blind that He physically touched, nor the dead that He called forth from their graves.  But of a truth I can testify that I have in very deed been healed of my own leprosy.  I have been given power to take up my bed and walk.  I have been taught to see where once I was blind.  And I have had moments where I found new life within my heart where once there had been deadness and despair.  Through all these miracles, He has taught me, "Without me ye can do nothing."  And no message has ever been so truly comforting.

Moments of Heartache, Moments of Courage

It's been a long time since I've blogged, and a lot of things have taken place since May.  I'm just here to write a short piece that probably no one else will read because my readership all left, but I needed to write something.

2014 has been an extremely trying year for me.  Professionally I find myself eking out a pretty meager existence; romantically I find myself back where I was when I started this blog, discouraged and wondering where to go; and personally just filled with lots of doubts and questions about my life.  Suffice it to say, 2015 can't come soon enough for me right now.

But in the midst of all this I keep coming back to a line from the movie "We bought a Zoo" about how all we really need is 20 seconds of insane courage to do something difficult.  I've been trying to do this lately, to find just 20 seconds of courage and to somehow do things that have always seemed so difficult for me.  So far none of those 20 second efforts have panned out so well, but I am trying and when I have felt that I have no more courage left, somehow I found 20 more seconds.

Brett

Forgetting and Remembering

Happy Mother's Day!  I am sure I never say this often enough, but I have a wonderful Mother who blesses every aspect of my life.  She has been supportive and encouraging in every aspect of my life.  She has never allowed me to quit a single worthy endeavor, but at the same time has been encouraging when my best efforts proved to be insufficient for the effort at hand.  Whenever there is a problem, I know that she will listen and provide me with the encouragement and support I need.  I owe her more than I can ever adequately describe.

I apologize for a pictureless post today, but my Mac has been on the fritz and needs a new logic board when I get back to Utah this week.

It's hard to believe that this week I will move back to Utah without the necessity of returning to Texas in three months.  I can't wait to see my family again and spend time with them and with so many friends who have blessed my life.  These thoughts of returning to Utah coincided with the Gospel Doctrine lesson in my ward today.  I had been released, so I did not teach the lesson, but as we talked about the book of Deuteronomy, we discussed the topic of "remembering" and why it means so much to us.  In the process of that discussion, we also discussed the problem of "forgetting" leading one person to raise an interesting question.  He asked, "If remembering is so important, why does God make it so easy for us to forget?"

During this discussion, I came to a realization that I had never thought of before: The ability to forget is a great blessing.  Obviously there are things in our lives which, if forgotten will lead us into trouble.  If we forget the Lord and His commandments, we will inevitably experience the pain that grows out of disobedience.  If we forget the Savior's atonement, we will inevitably fail to honor His sacred name and sacrifice.  But imagine a mortal world in which we could not forget anything?  Imagine a world in which we perfectly and vividly remembered all of our pains and struggles, all of the distress that we had ever experienced.  If we were incapable of forgetting some things, we could never move forward.  The ability to forget, to have our pains and struggles dulled with time, is a tremendous blessing.

One of the trendiest fields in history at the moment is the "Memory study."  The idea is that people make conscious and unconscious choices about the things that they remember and forget in history.  Sometimes these choices are detrimental, as people choose to forget important aspects of their history while remembering things that skew the story in certain ways.  For example, one author argued that after the 1870s, Americans had downplayed the role of slavery in their memories of the cause of the Civil War.  This allowed the nation to heal and made equal heroes out of both the North and the South, but at the same time undermined the important process of healing America's struggles with racism, leaving that healing till the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement.  While the merits of that argument are certainly debatable, I like the idea that we make choices about what we remember and what we forget, as it allows us to have a choice in defining our own individual stories.

There are things that we need to choose to forget, and there are things that we need to choose to remember.  Does this skew the story?  Of course it does.  But if in our forgetting, we bury past hurts and past offenses away with the refuse of our lives, we have an opportunity to begin anew and strengthen the relationships that those hurts had damaged.  In our remembering, we can choose to let go of the pain and the hurt, and choose to remember the healing and the miracles of God all along the way that enabled us to grow from our struggles.  We can choose to grow.  We can choose to heal.  We can choose to remember God's love and forget the injustices we may have suffered.

May we choose the right things to remember and choose the right things to forget.  May we use the gift of forgetfulness as it was truly intended to be used and bury the pains of bygone days in the past that we might build toward a brighter future on the Rock of Christ.

Brett

All Your Losses

Greek Depiction of the Resurrection; I use it because I love the depiction of Christ's power

It would be great if I had something wonderful to post here about this week, but it was mostly mundane stuff and grading finals.  I'm just getting things packed up and I'm getting ready to pick my Dad up a week from Monday and then set out for home.  So that's more or less my life for the moment.

For many years, I've had a favorite quotation from Joseph Smith that has given me hope and filled me with joyful anticipation for coming days.  On April 16, 1843, Joseph Smith said, "All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection provided you continue faithful, by the vision of the Almighty I have seen it" (Joseph Smith, April 16, 1843, Words of Joseph Smith, 196).  This beautiful quotation inspires me every single time I read it and consider its implications.  Lately though I've been considering this quotation in ways that had not been apparent to me earlier.

As with most things, it helps to put quotations into context.  When something is said often reveals the reasons why it was said and adds layers to our understanding that the words themselves do not convey. To say that Joseph Smith had been tried by death, would be a large understatement.  In his own immediate family, Joseph had endured the following deaths:

1. Ephraim Smith (brother), March 13, 1810
2. Alvin Smith (brother), November 19, 1823
3. Alvin Smith (son), June 15, 1828
4. Thaddeus Smith (son), April 30, 1831
5. Louisa Smith (daughter), April 30, 1831
6. Joseph Murdock Smith (son), March 29, 1832
7. Calvin W. Stoddard (brother-in-law), November 19, 1836
8. Jerusha Barden Smith (sister-in-law), October 13, 1837
9. Joseph Smith Sr. (father), September 14, 1840
10. Mary Bailey Smith (sister-in-law), January 1841
11. Don Carlos Smith (brother), August 7, 1841
12. Don Carlos Smith (son), August 15, 1842

Add in the deaths of grandparents, close friends, and other members of the Church, and we begin to glimpse just how much the topic of death was on the mind of Joseph Smith and why he was so interested in the promises of the Resurrection.

Joseph Smith spoke the above quotation on the occasion of the funeral of Lorenzo D. Barnes, an early member who had joined the Church in 1833.  He had been a faithful member of the Church, marching with Zion's Camp in 1834 and serving several missions.  On January 3, 1836, the Prophet blessed Barnes, saying, "Thou art a chosen vessel unto the Lord to bare the fullness of the Gospel unto the people and Nations afar off.  Be faithful and thou shalt be endowed with power from on high for the Spirit of the Highest shall rest upon Thee and thou shalt go forth from land to land from nation to nation and from Kingdom to Kingdom" (Lorenzo Dow Barnes, diary, January 3, 1836).  In 1841, while in the process of carrying out this commission to preach the gospel, Lorenzo Barnes was called to preach the gospel in England.  He faithfully went to England, spending a short time in Manchester, following which mission leaders sent him to Bradford, England.  On December 20, 1842, this faithful missionary passed away due to unknown causes.  And then in April, the Saints in Nauvoo held a funeral for him.  It was at this funeral, that Joseph Smith declared with power: "All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection provided you continue faithful, by the vision of the Almighty I have seen it" (Joseph Smith, April 16, 1843, Words of Joseph Smith, 196).

Any death is painful.  But Lorenzo Barnes had died away from home while in the service of the Lord.  How must this loss have affected his family (little is known of Barnes's family circumstances) and friends?  Surely the pain of his loss was compounded by the fact that he had been thousands of miles away from home at the time of his death.  But it is in the case of just such deep and poignant losses that the atonement of Jesus Christ finds its greatest meaning.  It is in the promise of a day of absolute and eternal renewal and redemption that we find the hope and strength that are necessary to move forward after our losses.  And what strength we can take from the declaration that Joseph made with the power of a Seer, saying, "By the vision of the Almighty I have seen it."

Lately I have been coming to realize, however, that while the ultimate redemption of our losses will not come until the resurrection day, the reality is that God is constantly making our losses up to us all along the way.  For the here and now, He grants us compensating blessings as we struggle with our losses, not the least of which blessings, is the constant comfort of His love and the power of the Holy Ghost.  Where some blessings seem to be withheld for the present, He mercifully grants us strength and opportunities in life's other venues.  He does not ask us to valiantly hold on through unending misery until the resurrection.  No, He gives us countless opportunities for joy and ceaseless reminders of His great goodness to us, no matter which blessings we may momentarily be lacking.  In this I think he is like my Papa Haycock, who could never quite wait until Christmas to bestow gifts upon his grandchildren and then still had gifts for us at Christmas.  God is anxious to bless His children whenever and however we are willing to receive His blessings.

I thank God for the fact that "All [our] losses will be made up to [us] in the resurrection provided [we] continue faithful" (Joseph Smith, April 16, 1843, Words of Joseph Smith, 196).  I thank God that He testified of the truth of this principle by providing the Seer of the Latter days with a vision of its truth.  And I thank God that He does not wait until the end to make good on His promise to make our losses up to us if we are faithful.

Brett