Lesson 14: Ye shall be a peculiar treasure

Lesson 14 this week is, to me, a lesson about all of us as followers. It's about strengthening ourselves as followers, so that our leaders can be strengthened to lead properly.

Many of us have felt that moment: you get asked to do something that you know is way over your head. Maybe it's nursery leader, maybe it's young women's president. Maybe it's the bishopric. You don't feel ready. You feel inadequate and undersized. You know you, and you know your inadequacies. You know your sins and weaknesses - certainly someone else has a better resume than you. Right? But you also understand that the person providing the call to you is a representative of the Lord.

Yes, you're inadequate for that job or calling. Of course you are. That's fine though - the Lord makes up the difference if we'll let him.

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The same is true of Moses. One of the greatest prophets ever, was he inadequate for the job? Absolutely, and the Lord knew that, was fine with that, and worked with that. A passage in Exodus 17:8-13 describes how two men, who we could think of perhaps as counselors, or perhaps simply as members of the church, helped Moses do what Moses couldn't by himself. He had a staff to hold up, and as long as it was up, Moses' fighting men prevailed. The problem is that no man can hold that up all day long - it's humanly impossible, even for a legend like Moses. But if he lowered it, his men would die and his army began to lose the battle. It had to be up.

The answer? Get two strong men around Moses to help him lift. They didn't and couldn't take Moses' burden from him, but they helped him lift.

This goes me back to moments in my life when I heard someone say that the bishop was not up to the job, or that someone else was doing it wrong. Was the complainer right? Technically yes, perhaps. But they were so wrong. You make a leader strong not by complaining about his inability to carry the staff, but by lifting him or her, and easing their load. Love and service, not griping and complaining.

The Israelites did this at another time as well. Moses had just gotten them through the red sea. Is this enough to have them revere him as a man of God and treasured leader forever? Nope. Was it enough that the Lord fed them for free? Nope. Manna, quail and water weren't enough. They apparently wanted pizza. Can't the Lord that makes manna happen send down pizza occasionally? And on Saturdays, can't we get maybe some nice sushi? If it's all the same to the Lord, we're bored of manna! Oh - and if it's pizza, not Little Caesar's. We want pizza hut.

But Moses and the Lord wouldn't do that. This kind of reminds me of people following Christ, not because they recognized him as the Savior of their soul, but because he came with free food. And when the free food stops being tasty enough, our gratitude for it wanes, and we demand more.

This reminds me of politics. We as a human race haven't changed that much. We're a bunch of takers - still.

So now, without pizza on the menu, the Israelites start complaining about Moses. You can imagine the signs and posters: "Where's the beef?!", "No pizza, no respect!", "No sushi, no sunday!"

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The Lord called them a peculiar treasure. They are peculiar all right. Treasure? Only the Lord can see that. I just see demanding and annoying. I guess I don't have the Lord's viewpoint. It's good he loves them. I'm sure I annoy him as well - often.

This of course isn't a reflection on Moses - he is what he is. It's a reflection on those who call themselves God's chosen people. They prove their lesser-ness. They add to the weight their leader must carry.

If our leaders are imperfect, if they are flagging, it's time to step in. Not to complain, but to love, lift, and serve. We can't take their calling from them, but we can lovingly assist. In this way, we can build ourselves so that our own load is easier to carry.

We can be a lighthouse, not only to those who are less than in some way, but to everyone. To those who have bigger callings and heavier loads, we can also reflect God's light. May we do so.

Which is the better motivator? Darkness or light?

I met a person on the internet a few years ago - an accident had put this physically healthy individual in a wheelchair. As far as I could tell, it would be his condition for life. To say he was angry would be an understatement. He was somewhere south of bitter. He blamed god, and vented his anger about his condition to anyone and everyone. As a random stranger to him, I got an earful from him as well. It had been, if I remember correctly, a couple of years since the accident.

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I remember reading a book where the author was a scientist, again this was a number of years ago. He described his philosophy that life for human kind was intended to be barely tolerable. Not good by any means, but tolerable enough to just barely stay above the suicide line. He believed that his philosophy was science, and that his viewpoint on life was similar to that of all humanity.

The anger and despair these people feel, and so many others like them, is normal to them. It is justifiable to them, based on "facts" that these individuals choose to see, but life doesn't have to be that way. We can choose the life that we live, at least in terms of what matters most.

So I'm following along in my study of light. This time in 3 Nephi 10. Previously, you had the Nephites that were evil in nature at the time. They were waiting for the day/night/day miracle. Other signs that had been prophesied of happened, but they pinned their hopes on one: the day/night/day thing. "If that doesn't happen" they said "then it's all false and we'll kill the believers". All in on one thing - or so they said. Then the day/night/day thing happened. Did they turn into believers on the spot? Of course not - that would mess with their chosen belief set and lifestyle. So they decided it was trickery or whatever, and kept being who they had always been.

The miracles didn't inspire them. The miracle they said they were looking for happened - no change. What would it take? What does the Lord have to do to turn them (or us) around?

So then He tried darkness. The opposite of the day/night/day thing happened. Darkness for 3 days. No lights. No candles, no torches. Darkness. My claustrophobia would have turned me into a melted mess on the ground. It alone might have killed me.

The scene included mists of darkness, earthquakes, heavy weather, landslides, etc. Numerous large cities were burned, sunk or buried. It seems that the Lord got creative in different ways to destroy so much of this evil civilization. All of this sounds thoroughly unpleasant to me, but honestly, I'd perhaps rather be buried or sunk rather than endure 3 days surrounded by dark nothingness. Frightening.

Did this result in positive changes? Yep. It did help, I'm sure, that much of the evil population was exterminated. Funny what having your evil neighbor turned into toast can do to your own motivations.

Christ ended the 3 day event when his voice became clear to all. For whatever crazy reason, the people listened this time. And then they became one of the happiest, most righteous people ever to populate the earth.

So the day/night/day event, which was a miracle, and which was an undeniable testimony of Christ's light did nothing. But darkness, tempest, death and destruction turned out to be quite a motivator. Good thing that doesn't happen to us in these days - we always turn toward the light when we are invited toward it - right?

The Lord would rather guide us into and through his light than send us the darkness. But I believe that the bottom line is that sometimes love and light don't do the trick - and the Lord must send darkness to teach us what we need to know. Of course, darkness doesn't mean that we're doing things wrong, but it might mean that perhaps is we study the darkness, and learn from it what we can, that we can re-enter the light.

I believe that the first rule in being our parent is that the Lord loves us. Because this is the case, he will do whatever is necessary to teach us, to move us forward, to help us improve. Our negative choices move us toward darkness - that's not the Lord's fault, it's ours. Our lack of choosing light also may tie the Lord's hands. May we choose Light.

Miracles aren't enough

Have you ever been in that bible bash with someone of another religion, where you feel like you pull out that perfect scriptural reference, where use your life experiences and your knowledge of God to put things together as perfectly as possible? Where you testify what you have learned by the power of the spirit and it was poetically beautiful? Where you feel like you've done the very best you can, with help from the other side. Yeah - that moment. And you look at the person you're trying to teach/help/bash with, and you see they gained nothing from it.

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They were waiting for you to finish talking, so they could continue the argument. The best you can hope for is to do so well on a subject that they change the subject to one that they believe they can more successfully argue against you. The worst case - well, the worst case probably results in you understanding that you have cast your pearls before swine. You've given up the pearls, the swine are not benefitted, and now you and the pearls are covered in manure. All you have done is get dirty.

I've felt like that before. I realize that after one of these sessions, not only do I feel like I need to take a shower from the angry emotions I feel, but also I need to check my own intellect: why would a person willingly waddle into a swamp to mud wrestle with a pig? You just know you're going to get dirty, and the pig will enjoy it. Why do we do that? It's not love - not if we know what the outcome will be. I think it's pride.

Self reliance is self failure. Not relying on the Lord - and following his counsel - is pretty much always failure. Guaranteed. We're not perfect individuals, so our best laid plans are imperfect, and will be imperfectly executed.

But what if during that bible bash moment I was able to do something really super awesome? Call down an angel! Or get a meteor to smash right behind his head while he's making a point? Then he'd get it, right?

So here I am, reading in 3 Nephi. The Nephites were pretty much all wicked at this point, and it took Samuel the Lamanite to call them all to repentance. He had authorization to prophesy a variety of "signs and wonders", the greatest of which was a day, night and day with no darkness. Five years from now, he says. So the signs and wonders happen. Does this fix the Nephites? Nope. They get used to them. "It wasn't the day/night/day thing, so it doesn't count" is their response. The day comes when 5 years is up. Signs and wonders? Check. Day/night/day? Not check. They decide to put all the believers to death on the 5 years and 1 day mark. It's the only sign that they're going to count.

Then the moment happens. Night is day. Does this convert them? A few - for a while, but no. If conversion is a dedication to turn our hearts and souls to him, it was a waste of miracles. Did it help the believers? What was the benefit of all those signs, wonders and miracles? Only the Lord has that answer. Was it worth it? God did it, and he has that answer too. It's not mine to attempt to answer that question. He is the only perfect judge.

The light that I do gather from this story though, is that of light. On the night of Christ's birth in Jerusalem, he chose to signal his birth using light. This goes me back to him referring himself to being light. "I am the light of the world". The bright night indicates that light has come to earth, that darkness is at the mercy of light, and that the great Light of the universe controls everything.

Back to the evil folk: did they turn from their evil and become saints? Nope, not even after the one event that they placed all their bets on. This reinforces to me that as a human race, we are not really looking for truth. We're instead looking for confirmation that what we're doing is OK. That's the general rule for humanity. Disciples of God need to change that.

So if miracles don't turn us toward the light, what does? God poured a pile of miracles on the Nephites. As the eternal and perfect judge, he poured enough on them to be more than clear, without doing more than was adequate - any more than what should have been enough would probably just result in further condemnation to the unwilling receiver.

But what turns us toward the light? We do. God does. It's not the meteor that hits the bible bash partner that turns him, it's not our super awesome debate skills. It's not our superior intellect, or our knowledge and memory of just the right scriptures. It's also not about the lack thereof. Instead of memorizing bible bash scriptures, perhaps some of that time can be spent strengthening our soul, so we can more effectively invite others toward Christ. To be the light reflected - the lighthouse - and to make sure our own gaze and hope is not directed toward more knowledge, more ego, more skills, but more reliance on Christ.

I believe that all gifts we have are to be found, cultivated, grown, harvested and shared abundantly. The ability to communicate (what I call the gift of Aaron) and knowledge are beautiful. Like all gifts, they should be developed lest we find ourselves on judgment day, and be found to have hidden our gifts. That said, those gifts are means to serve. Not the end. May we all look to Christ. Everything else will fail.

Lesson 13: Bondage, passover and exodus

It's one of those parts of being human: we look around ourselves and see the greatness in others. That friend is so much smarter than me. This friend seems to always have such great confidence that he can manage pretty much anything. This friend has such great spiritual power. This one has such a great relationship with his wife and kids. That would be paradise. If only I could have a sliver of what they have, I might be able to manage - but I don't. Life is hard.

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Yet, at the same time and surely completely unknown to us, those same friends look at us and have similar longings. Maybe they wish to have our patience, our ability to deal with burdens, our ability to love, even our ability to run. Whatever it is, it seems to be a human condition: everybody thinks everybody else has things together better than us.

And at the same time, we judge ourselves to be inadequate, inferior, incapable and undeserving.

Moses thought that way too.

So I'm reading in Exodus chapter 3, and it's surprising how quickly this chapter moves. They pretty much made a 2 hour movie out of a few verses in this chapter. Pretty good movie too - by the way.

Here's some back story. The Lord brings Moses out of Egypt, sets him up with a wife, then tells him "Hey, you're going to bring all of the Israelites out of Egypt". Moses knows that the Israelites are like - more than you can count. He knows that the Egyptians rely on that labor to keep their economy going. He knows there's not enough money in the world to buy their freedom, and he's not exactly in good graces with the Egyptians - the first thing they'll want to do when they see him is to kill him. This is not a great setup. It sounds like something akin to "charge of the light brigade", only to Moses it had to sound like "Moses walks into a herd of zombies". He had to know that by himself, he could only hope for being killed less brutally.

The thing is - Moses wasn't by himself. And neither are we. How often do we get a church calling. I suppose it doesn't matter the calling. Maybe it's the nursery leader, maybe it's teaching the 7 year olds, or teenagers. Maybe it's teaching the adults in school, or maybe it's bishop. No madda. Are we up to it? Are we ready?

Of course not. We're not capable of doing any calling well on our own. If we look to our own skill set, we'll fail. And I do believe that it is those who rely on their own skill sets in any calling that are most dangerous. But when we rely on the Lord, things change. Suddenly you take a man with a bounty on his head, who doesn't speak well, a fugitive, and he becomes a prophet. Was he ready? By human standards, of course he wasn't. That didn't matter to the Lord - the Lord made up the difference.

But why? How did our Father know that he could choose Moses? The answer might be in verse 4. "And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the mist of the bush, and he said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I."

There could be a discussion about what turning aside to see means, but that's out of the scope of this thought, and I don't think I go deep enough to lead that discussion. I do think the key point here though is the last sentence "And he said, Here am I."

I think that's all the Lord needs when he calls us to any position, title or level of authority. He knows what we can do, he knows where we can go with his help. All he needs is willingness from us. "Here am I."

The Lord needs us to be a million dollar bill for him. We're ten cents at the moment. Is that enough? It is under two conditions: 1) we trust the Lord, and 2) we're willing to be used.

"Here am I" is a beautiful phrase. It can apply when you're driving past someone with a flat tire. It can apply when a customer or client needs to be served well. It can apply when life tries to overwhelm us. It can apply when life tries to overwhelm others around us.

May we all surrender our wills to the Lord. I believes it begins with a daily affirmation of "Here am I" to the Lord. And then - he may just return the favor.

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light is an interesting subject

So I'm going through an interesting subject - one that I am beginning to understand that I can't begin to understand. The subject is light.

I realized today that light is a way that God refers to himself, and to use a rather vulgar example, somehow it's the best description of his "brand" or his product - or the best description of what it feels like when you're around the Lord.  How it feels when you're living the life the Lord would prescribe.

It makes me recoil a bit to describe the Lord using the word "brand", but if a brand is what you're known by, then that's why I chose that word. It seems to be the word that God uses most to describe himself.

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So the word is light. Jesus used it to describe himself: "I am the light and the life of the world". So if I were really, super duper wise, I'd understand the difference between the two words light and life. Is he referring to something like energy and matter? I don't know and couldn't presume to guess. What I do understand is that I don't even have a kindergarten understanding on the subject, but that I can perhaps get closer if I ask for and receive that gift. What I do understand though, is that Christ referred to himself as two things on this occasion: light and life. That he chose to refer to himself with these two words makes them both pretty good subjects to consider, to study, and to request further understanding about.

So that goes me to today's reading. Alma 36:20. The back story is that Alma had been visited by an angel and corrected from his evil ways, persecuting those who were trying to live well. His pain for doing so left him in a lump on the ground for days. In his words, nothing could be so exquisite and so bitter. He used the language to describe an indescribably painful moment, and with that tool, used the strongest words he could. It was a biblically bad day. 3 of them.

And then he used the same words to describe his joy after he felt the light of forgiveness. "And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold, yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!"

Interesting, isn't it, that Alma could use any of the language's million words (I don't know how many there are) to describe his feelings about the event, and he used the word "light"? What is it about that word? Is it that light is an as-of-yet not understood sector of physics? A physics professor will tell you everything is either matter or waves, but that light is neither-and both. It doesn't fit in either category. How does this fit in with the "light and truth?" I have no answers.

Alma 37:23, and the word is used again "...a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light...". Here again the Lord refers to darkness as the adversary, and all things evil, wrong, angry and sad. And light when things are right.

It is said that people shine when their lives are well lived - that you can see it in their faces. Decide for yourself if that's true, but I often perceive that some people feel lighter, or brighter to me, and it's easy to be around them. Some lift me because I feel who they are, and I yearn to be around them and feel their light.

I don't understand light at all. What I do understand is that any light I have, I don't have. Like a lighthouse, it's not my light. It gets generated somewhere that's not me. The power doesn't belong to me, I just direct it. But I can direct it, and use it, and help others by directing and reflecting whatever it is. I don't have to understand it to use it as I help others navigate their own paths.

May we all seek for that light. May all of our windows be brightly lit by the Lord, and may we brighten our own residences by directing that light toward those around us.

Whose light is that anyway?

So I'm coming at this post from an uncomfortable place today. I don't have the direction of the post figured out yet. I'm trusting that the Lord can make something that I haven't found the pattern to yet.

I've been working on the concept of lighthouses. I know I am to be a lighthouse, and I'm working on learning everything that it means to do so. There is a lot of symbolism, and I feel I can learn more about my role as I learn from the symbolism. For example, what does it mean in the hymn when it says "let the lower lights be burning" - it's a beautiful tune. One that has been in my mind for about a week now when my brain goes to neutral.

For those of us that are male, you'll understand. We like to have our minds in neutral - it's our zero place. It's a good place. For me, that song fills that spot in that place.

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And what about the light? The lighthouse doesn't generate it, it just reflects and perhaps directs the light. It's not the lighthouse's light, it's the Lord's, but the lighthouse directs it to save and protect and guide others.

I guess it's also true that the lighthouse may never know or meet those whom it has guided or protected, but it has done its job nonetheless. The lighthouse doesn't come with a lot of fanfare - no marching bands, no fireworks, no applause. It just does its silent job in saving souls.

Today's reading is on light, and I'm working in Alma chapter 32. This follows a well-known discussion on faith. Light comes in slightly after that. verse 35: O then, is not this real? I say unto you, yea, because it is light, and whatsoever is light, is good, ye must know that it is good; and now behold, after ye have tasted this light is your knowledge perfect?

So the answer to the last part of this is that no - you have received light on a subject, and you have knowledge. But that doesn't make you a PhD. It might make you a day 1 kindergarten graduate, but there is lots of room for growth here. It might be true that as soon as you think you've achieved something for yourself or in the Lord's kingdom, you've stopped or severely stinted your future growth.

But when we receive light, "Is this not real?" We know it is when we receive it. It feels, it tastes, and you can see it. You know it. This is how a person can know the difference between good and evil - you come to know the beautiful feel of the Lord's light. Nothing else can approach it.

Many will try to duplicate the light. They will copy the routines, match the language patterns, sing similar songs, use impressive language and shout about holiness, but they lack the Lord's light. Christ is the light and the center of it. Without him, a lighthouse is just a pile of rocks, and its purpose is just as empty.

May we fill ourselves with the Lord's light, and ask him to allow us to reflect that light to others. "As I have loved you, love one another". May we learn what Christ meant when he said "As I have loved you" - that comes first. Then we can lighthouse in His name and with His power.