Jesus Christ

PART I
The Savior’s Signature Dish
Someone said there are two ways to see life-in the first way, nothing is a miracle; in the second, ‘everything’ is a miracle. I tend towards the latter view. What the Lord fashions with the raw material of our lives is miraculous. Seeing the Lord’s hand in my life has come increasingly since I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

There’s always a feast set for us, in and out of adversity, though we often miss it. The Savior’s signature dish is His perfect love, in every circumstance, including those that result from other’s misuse of their agency.

I admit, I am carried away to some degree each time I taste even a morsel of that love. It’s the miracle written all over creation and visible in virtually every corner of our own universes. Feeling that doesn’t mean life has been easy. Quite the opposite.

Tasting God’s love in our lives includes rather than excludes times and situations of pain and complexity and hurt and grief and indecision and disappointment and depression. While some of us see His hand in some parts of our lives, we bracket the rest, apologizing or losing joy permanently over what seems an anomaly to the plan or an inexplicable disappointment.

Carlfred Broderick, Mormon author, once said in a BYU fireside (regularly-held Mormon devotionals), “We often expect pain-free lives as members of the Church of Jesus Christ. The gospel is not an exemption from pain; it is a resource in the time of pain.”

I’ve learned and testify that the Savior’s influence and handwriting is always evident, even if we cannot make out His complete message to us at the time. I testify that He is in the labyrinth of our lives as well as in its straightforward moments, or God would cease to be God.

The miracle of His love never ends; it just resurfaces differently. It’s the miracle of God’s pressing hearts-exerting spiritual pressure in order to extract impurities and perfect us through His atonement–or it’s His working someone else’s inexplicable misuse of agency to the eventual profit of our own soul.

The Refiner’s Fire
There’s a song sung by Steve Green, called The Refiner’s Fire. Some of the lyrics follow:

The Refiner’s Fire

There burns a fire of sacred heat

White hot with holy flame

And all that pass through its embrace

Will not emerge the same

Some as bronze; and some as silver

Some as gold

Then with great skill, are hammered by their suffering

On the anvil of His will

The refiner’s fire has now become my soul (sole) desire

Purged and cleansed and purified that the Lord be glorified

He is consuming my soul;

refining me, making me whole

No matter what I may lose,

I choose the refiner’s fire.

Steve Green The Mission

“Sacred heat. White hot with holy flame”-a choice description of the refining influence. While I’m not sure I’d ever jump right into the furnace of affliction, I am glad for the opportunity to be purged and for the perspective on pain and adversity that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings.

Isn’t it times when our heart is pressed by pain or grief or desire that we learn so much about ourselves and our Savior-that the surgery necessary to be purified can occur?

What will it take to be purified-to have the chambers of our heart cleansed and perfected? Can we take the heat?

Spiritual Presses
Trials-spiritual presses-are tailored to the pace and performance of our own hearts. What might induce a simple itch for one of us, therefore, may cause throbbing pain for another.

Some among us have cared for Alzheimer’s victims or cancer patients or those with intense or chronic pain, or disability. Some among us have watched children suffer with severe acute or terminal illnesses while others have personally suffered intense pain and/or sickness. Some of us have known the crests and troughs of emotional pain-caused by our own or others’ acts.

While there may even be a few of us who have known relatively little pain, others may have experienced an enormity of it. Some have already visited their Gethsemanes; others still await them. Mormons believe such opposition is part of the mortal experience but can be sanctifying.

And sometimes the presses are of a different variety-times when our hearts have been laid open in situations less visible to others:

Times when someone in the wrong is taken as right, at our expense.

Times when our expectations exceed our reality.

Times when we hold on to the thread of hope or desire.

Times when our character is misjudged or falsely indicted.

Times when our strength just won’t cut it.

Times when, like children in Israel, we doubt the very existence of a promised land.

Regardless of the nature or size of the trial, the size of God’s hand never changes. And it never disappears. It does, however, continue to “enlarge our hearts” (Psalms 119:32).

“Out of the Wilderness”

Here’s a simple example of the Lord’s influence in my life as a young mother. This one occurred 15 years years ago, after Talia was born. My immune system seemed to quit, probably from malnutrition during sickness in pregnancy and related hormonal changes. In any case, I found myself depleted after her birth and unable to run as fast as I was accustomed.

In fact, I still felt as if I were lugging around a hotel when I got out of bed, or walking through a sleep-inducing field of poppy with Dorothy, even after “twelve” hours of la-la-land-twice my normal requirement. My circumstances persisted, and I invited in depression over my inability to regain my former stamina.

One day, I opened providentially to The Book of Mormon (an amazing scriptural book and second witness of Jesus Christ), in Alma 37:38-47, and read the following:

38. And now, … I have something to say concerning the thing which our fathers call a ball, or director-or our fathers called it Liahona, which is, being interpreted, a compass; and the Lord prepared it.

39. … And behold, it was prepared to show unto our fathers the course which they should travel in the wilderness….

41. Nevertheless, because those miracles were worked by small means, it did show unto them marvelous works. They were slothful, and forgot to exercise their faith and diligence, and then those marvelous works ceased, and they did not progress in their journey.

42. Therefore, they tarried in the wilderness, or did not travel a direct course, and were afflicted with hunger and thirst, because of their transgressions… (emphasis added)

I was doused with the spirit of poppy-penetrating revelation. The Lord acknowledged my own wilderness experience. I wasn’t exempt from such nor had I willfully created it.  But there was more.

I was impressed by the fact that the Nephites (ancient inhabitants of this continent whose account I was reading, who had fled Jerusalem at the time of Zedekiah to come to this land) “did not progress in their journey” and in fact, “tarried in the wilderness” longer than they needed to.

Aha, now I was getting it. The Lord seemed to say, in these verses, that I could ‘leave’ the wilderness any time I was ready-ready to exercise my faith in a greater measure. The test was over but I was still hanging around the exam room. Instead of going a “direct course,” I had taken an unnecessary spiritual detour (42). What an appetizing platter prepared by a loving Father.

I no sooner began to investigate some new ways of approaching my physical symptoms, while calling further upon priesthood help, when I began gradually to improve until I fully regained my emotional and physical health and vigor.This doesn’t mean all illnesses are delayed recoveries; it meant in this case, my health was to be restored as I increased my faith in that recovery process.

Having a heart pressed, or de-pressed, tutored me in the word and love of the Lord in my individual circumstance. There have been other incidents or moments when the Lord has done similarly, as He promises, and dispersed the clouds of darkness for me as he did for Nephi, a prophet who lived on this continent, and others recorded in modern scripture  (Alma 19:6; D&C 21:6). I am grateful for those impressions of the heart.

Collectively, they remind me of another kind of press-even “the olive press.” See Part II.

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