Covenants and Confidence

I recently had the opportunity to attend the temple.
Okay, it was yesterday.
It is only five minutes away.
Don't hate me.

Anyway, this  month seems to have had more than its share of moments when all my inadequacies have been typed in bold face, italicized., and underlined.    It is like life wants to make sure I don't miss the fact that I am pretty much pathetic.
Thank you, life.

Happily, life has also brought me really close to a temple and I can go there often.
Thank you, life.

Temples are places where you make covenants with God about life, about family, and about ourselves. You promise, and so does He.  I have always found it comforting that even though I am inadequate in a million ways, I have made covenants with the most powerful person in the universe.
Yesterday, as I was reviewing these promises we have made to one another, I felt something I had not felt for awhile.  I felt confident. With the help of God and with my desire to serve, I could help other people in a manner that would be acceptable to God.  What a good feeling.
Thank you, God.

A wise woman name Rosemary Wixom once said to a very large group of women,
 "As we strive to keep our covenants, our feelings of inadequacy and imperfection seem to fade while the ordinances and the covenants of the temple come alive."

The power that comes through temple covenants are real.
They make a difference and they matter.
But you know what?  A lot of of other things don't.

An interesting and powerful phrase followed me out of the temple yesterday.
"...and it doesn't matter."
I guess that, because I had been focusing on things that do matter-- that matter more than anything else in life, I was able to really see what does not matter.

I burned dinner.  Again. And it doesn't matter.
I can't fit into that dress.  And it doesn't matter.
I can't do countless things as well as anyone else on the planet. And it doesn't matter.  
I can do my best, which will be pathetic when compared to others,
and unacceptable to many of those around me.
  And it doesn't matter.  

I can do my best and my efforts can be accepted by God,
who will constantly be helping me to do better.

That matters.  
Thank you, God.



 

Love the Beach, Hate the Gulf.

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I had an interesting dream last night.  I was invited to visit a friend I had not seen in a long time.  She had a great house in a beautiful place and I had not seen it before so I was excited to be invited.    As we started out on the journey, we were in a car, but then the road became narrow so we had to get out and use a bike.  But then the road became a slippery and narrow sheet of rock, much like a very narrow granite countertop.  I think it was suspended over a large body of water, but I don't remember really well.  We had to walk in bare feet, concentrating with every step. People were falling off it left and right. I woke up before I reached my friend's house, and I couldn't help but think of the Everlasting Gulf of Misery scriptures. 

So, basically, there is this Everlasting Gulf of Misery that Helaman and Lehi talk about, and you really do not want to fall into it because not only is it apparently everlastingly miserable, but it is also full of woe.  

BUT...

The people who cross  the "strait and narrow course" (which may or may not look like a granite countertop), will "land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out." 

This sounds like a good place to be.  And I have been reading the Old Testament lately, and I have more than a few questions they might be able to clear up for me, but that is another blog post.  

I love passages like these that seem to provide a pattern for how to live your life, giving specific actions you can do that will make life a whole lot better. Not only will you cross the gulf and be in good company, but you will  have some great experiences along the way as you balance on that narrow path  of slippery granite counter top.  What actions do you pick out in the following passage?

  Helaman 5:12

 And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.

To me, it just seems to say, 

Believe in Christ and follow his commandments and build everything you do upon Him, and then you won't fall for all the stupid stuff everyone says is good, and it looks good, but it will actually drag you down to endless woe. 

 And no one wants that.  

No one nice, anyway.  

Helaman 3:29.

29 Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked

And this one seems to say that anyone can know what God has asked them to do , make it part of them, and then BE  it.