Waiting upon the Lord

"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint." Isaiah 40:31

When I lived in Provo during my single college years one of my favorite spots was the public library. Sounds boring, I know! But the library there was bigger than any this small town girl had been in and it was awesome--especially because it had tons of LDS literature. I remember checking out a book of BYU Speeches and I absolutely fell in love with a talk by Elder Eyring entitled "Waiting Upon the Lord". I love this talk and just recently dug it out again. He talks about bringing down the powers of heaven in our every day lives. This talk is pretty much my ideal--if I can some day come to be the person Elder Eyring urges me to be in this talk. . .well let's just say I have a long ways to go to get there :) I'd just like to share a small segment of it here now but go ahead read the whole talk--it's worth it!!! You can find it here

"Let me encourage you by telling you a story. It was told to me by my father. He told it with the intent to chuckle at himself. It was a story about his trying to do his duty, just the way you try to do your duty.

Now you have to know a little bit about my father. His name was Henry Eyring, like mine. He had done some of the things students of this university are preparing to be able to do. His work in chemistry was substantial enough to bring the honors some of you will someday have, but he was still a member of a ward of the Church with his duty to do. To appreciate this story, you have to realize that it occurred when he was nearly eighty and had bone cancer. He had bone cancer so badly in his hips that he could hardly move. The pain was great.

Dad was the senior high councilor in his stake with the responsibility for the welfare farm. An assignment was given to weed a field of onions, so Dad assigned himself to go work on the farm.

Dad never told me how hard it was, but I have met several people who were with him that day. I talked to one of them on the phone the other night to check the story. The one I talked to said that he was weeding in the row next to Dad through much of the day. He told me the same thing that others who were there that day have told me. He said that the pain was so great that Dad was pulling himself along on his stomach with his elbows. He couldn't kneel. The pain was too great for him to kneel. Everyone who has talked to me has remarked how Dad smiled, and laughed, and talked happily with them as they worked in that field of onions.

Now, this is the joke Dad told me on himself, afterward. He said he was there at the end of the day. After all the work was finished and the onions were all weeded, someone asked him, "Henry, good heavens! You didn't pull those weeds, did you? Those weeds were sprayed two days ago, and they were going to die anyway."

Dad just roared. He thought that was the funniest thing. He thought it was a great joke on himself. He had worked through the day in the wrong weeds. They had been sprayed and would have died anyway.

When Dad told me this story, I knew how tough it was. So I said to him, "Dad, how could you make a joke out of that? How could you take it so pleasantly?"

He said something to me that I will never forget, and I hope you won't. He said, "Hal, I wasn't there for the weeds."

Now, you'll be in an onion patch much of your life. So will I. It will be hard to see the powers of heaven magnifying us or our efforts. It may even be hard to see our work being of any value at all. And sometimes our work won't go well.

But you didn't come for the weeds. You came for the Savior. And if you pray, and if you choose to be clean, and if you choose to follow God's servants, you will be able to work and wait long enough to bring down the powers of heaven."

Prayer

"I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." Abraham Lincoln

This quote was shared today in sacrament meeting and I loved it as soon as I heard it. All of the talks were on prayer and I sat there and bawled through the whole thing. It seems the older I get the more I cry :)I asked the Lord this morning to send me a message--to help me learn something for me in sacrament meeting today. My prayer was rather short and truthfully not very heartfelt but I offered nonetheless because I felt I needed to. The woman who spoke based her talk on the ensign article by Elder Eyring in this months ensign--I'm definitely going to have to read that one today! And the two main talks are what I needed to hear. My prayers have been pretty crappy lately when they've been uttered at all. I find I've let my life crowd out things that are of most importance. And at a time when I need the most guidance as I strive to raise his children with a desire to return back to Him. The man who spoke emphasized the importance of daily devotionals where we take the time to feed our souls and receive enlightenment. And his wife shared a story from her life where she needed the Lord's guidance and so she turned her will over to the Lord. She prayed ferevently that His will would be made known in her life. So that's my goal for not just this week or this month but for however long it takes! Because I know it's more of a process of development then a simple thing you can attain and cross off the list. I'm going to give some of my time--which is actually the Lord's anyway--to the Lord. For FEREVENT prayer, and study and just reflection. And strive to give my will to him--to finally come to know what He would have me do. . .and do it.

ETA: A friend posted this on facebook today and I thought it went well with this post:

Sacred Homes, Sacred Temples

I'm the primary secretary in our ward and one of my duties is a monthly newsletter. I both enjoy and loathe compiling the newsletter :) Each month I make up a primary presidency message and the August theme is on temples. So I went digging through all my temple info and decided upon a talk given in the last general conference. (Ensign General Conference issues are gems!!! So full of great talks!) The talk is entitled "Sared Homes, Sacred Temples" and it's by Elder Gary Stevenson. And it had just the message I was looking for. Here are my favorite quotes from his talk:

"I remember a warm, sunny afternoon when spring was trying to nudge its way through a long winter in Cache Valley, Utah. My father, whose Saturdays were always filled with chores for his grandsons, stopped by our home with an offer to “go for a ride.” Always happy to ride in Grandpa’s truck, our four- and six-year-old sons scurried into the back jump seat, and I joined my father in the front. Our drive took us through the streets of downtown Logan, which wrap around the Logan Temple, prominently situated on a hill, centered beautifully in the city. As we moved further away from the city, we turned from paved, busy streets to seldom-used dirt roads, where we crossed old bridges and weaved through trees far into the country. We were far from any other traffic and all alone.

Realizing his grandsons were in a place they had not been before, my father stopped the truck. “Do you think we are lost?” he asked the wide-eyed boys as they gazed out the windshield across the valley. Followed by a moment of silent assessment came the profound reply of a young child. “Look,” he said, pointing his finger, “Grandpa, you are never lost when you can see the temple.” Our eyes turned, focusing with his, seeing the sun glistening off the spires of the Logan Temple, far across the valley.

You are never lost when you can see the temple. The temple will provide direction for you and your family in a world filled with chaos. It is an eternal guidepost which will help you from getting lost in the 'mist of darkness'. It is the house of the Lord. It is a place where covenants are made and eternal ordinances are performed."

Recently, in a stake conference, all present were invited by the visiting authority, Elder Glen Jenson, an Area Seventy, to take a virtual tour of their homes using their spiritual eyes. I would like to invite each of you to do this also. Wherever your home may be and whatever its configuration, the application of eternal gospel principles within its walls is universal. Let’s begin. Imagine that you are opening your front door and walking inside your home. What do you see, and how do you feel? Is it a place of love, peace, and refuge from the world, as is the temple? Is it clean and orderly? As you walk through the rooms of your home, do you see uplifting images which include appropriate pictures of the temple and the Savior? Is your bedroom or sleeping area a place for personal prayer? Is your gathering area or kitchen a place where food is prepared and enjoyed together, allowing uplifting conversation and family time? Are scriptures found in a room where the family can study, pray, and learn together? Can you find your personal gospel study space? Does the music you hear or the entertainment you see, online or otherwise, offend the Spirit? Is the conversation uplifting and without contention? That concludes our tour. Perhaps you, as I, found a few spots that need some “home improvement”—hopefully not an “extreme home makeover.”

In order to keep the temple and those who attend it sacred and worthy, the Lord has established standards through His servants, the prophets. We may be well-advised to consider together, in family council, standards for our homes to keep them sacred and to allow them to be a “house of the Lord.” The admonition to “establish . . . a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God” provides divine insight into the type of home the Lord would have us build. Doing such begins the construction of a “spiritual mansion” in which we all may reside regardless of our worldly circumstance—a home filled with treasure that “neither moth nor rust doth corrupt.”

This talk made me realize that I have some work to do! I want my home to be a house of the Lord--a place where all who enter may find refuge from the storms of the world. And I've got to start with me. I find that the old saying, "if mama aint happy, aint nobody happy" is quite true. I usually set the tone in our home. May I speak with more kindness and love. And to put it bluntly--stop yelling!!! There's nothing that drives the Spirit out of our home faster than a tired, yelling Mom!!!