I was assigned to give a talk in Sacrament today. I think me speaking around Christmas and the New Year is beginning to become some kind of annual tradition (this is the 4th year in a row). Anyway, I'm working on a post with lots of photos and updates about my holiday doings in the old world, but I may wait until after New Years to publish it. In the mean time, I thought I'd share my talk with you. Some of my fellow ward members requested copies of it, so I'm hoping it's of some worth. It's a little unpolished - as most speech guides are - and is a terrible mash-up of UK and US spelling, but hopefully it still carries the same heart and sentiment in print that it did in voice.
I Press Toward the Mark (Sacrament talk – 29/12/2012)
New Year – a time of resolutions, new beginnings, looking to the
future, and remembering the past. Last
year around this time my life experienced a great change. It was unexpected,
unwanted, and abruptly interrupted the life path I thought I was to follow, not
only for the immediate future, but for the long term. As the New Year rolled around and the initial
shock and pain began to wear off, I realized I needed to re-evaluate my future,
and start to move on with my life.
I had no idea at the time that I would end up in England. In fact,
for a long time I had no idea of anything, and it seemed that God wanted me to
flounder in the dark, to “wander in the wilderness” so to speak. But, looking back (as hindsight always seems
to give us clearer vision) I realize that God was giving me time – time to learn
from what had happened, time to heal, and time to make sure I was making sound decisions
for the right reasons moving forward.
As we come to look toward a new year, I’d like to share a few things
I learned in the process:
Faith always points
forward.
It is a simple but true gem of a statement spoken by an inspired
High Council member in a time when I really needed it. He continued:
The past is to be learned
from, not lived in; don’t let your attachment to the past outweigh your
confidence in the future. – HC Member, Nephi, UT
I love simple yet powerful statements; when others are able to touch and share in a few short words the concepts so many of us struggle to grasp
and understand within. There are some
wonderful short and sweet passages in the scriptures that further emphasize
these words…
Go forward not backward. - D&C
128:22
Look not behind thee... - Gen
19:17
Remember Lot’s wife… - Luke
17:32
..but this one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things
which are before. I press toward the mark… - Phil 3:13
Man’s agency is God’s
limitation, but it is also his strength.
Through my trial and experience I learned that God has a limit; but
it is self-imposed. That limit is our agency. He could interfere, but He won’t – it is
counterproductive and would negate the plan of salvation. (One of the many reasons for this principle can be
found in
Alma 14:8-11 in the book of Mormon.) Many, if not the majority, of our
trials come not necessarily from the direct will of God, but from the consequences of
the actions of others and ourselves. God must allow us, each and every one of
us, to make choices and act on our own agency, whether for good or bad. This doesn't just apply to horribly evil or
large saintly decisions either – it applies to the everyday kind of good, or
not so good, or maybe it could be good choices that make up our daily lives.
Initially this concept was really difficult for me to accept; it didn't shake my faith in God, but my faith in man had been severely affected.
How could I possibly have faith in a future that was limited by the agency and decisions
of others? I felt powerless, like a leaf left to blow in the wind of others
choices. But, as I pondered and studied and prayed for faith and understanding
to move forward. I came to a realization: Just
as our exercising our agency to choose bad things disables God, so does using
our agency to choose His path empower Him.
Our agency, our choice, is powerful. Miracles happen – or cease
to happen as the case may be – in the world because of the choices we make to
give them power by faith. One of the best examples of this is as old as time,
that of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Their
mission, their role in the plan of salvation was to make a choice, to choose to
follow one path or another; and their decision effected every generation that was
to follow them for eternity - it became the catalyst for the plan of salvation.
Their choice was to progress, to learn from experience, to move forward.
We never lose the power to
change or the potential to become better.
Faith in God and mankind is a delicate balancing act of hope and
acceptance. After spending several
months working through the grieving and acceptance process, and trying to
figure out these complex issues related to the sometimes perplexing dichotomies
of faith, agency, miracles, and our human faults and limitations, I learned a
lesson about redemption and renewal in a rather unexpected and unorthodox place.
This last May I travelled home to spend time with my family. My mother, grandfather, and I all have
birthdays within consecutive days, and we often celebrate together with a big
extended family party – usually on my grandfather’s birthday as his falls in
the middle of the three. When I travel
home my mother takes some vacation days from work so that we can spend time
together. This year however, she had a
work commitment she needed to keep on the day of my birthday, and she invited
me to come along. My mother works as
drug counsellor in a rehab program in a state prison.
So, on the morning of my 28th birthday I found myself
navigating through security gates, metal detectors, and corridors of locked
power doors to attend the graduation ceremony of a few dozen inmates from a
drug rehabilitation program. Out of the
numerous men graduating only two or three had family members present and the
majority of the audience was made up of prison staff and other inmates in the
program. There were several speakers
from amongst the staff and inmates, and a lot of information shared about the
program itself. With all these formalities, the thing that made the biggest
impression on me was a skit a few of the graduates performed towards the end of
the ceremony.
Four inmates, shaking with nerves and excitement, their muscular
frames scarred, tattooed, and costumed in homemade props crafted from tape and
coloured paper, acted out a short story.
The story was about a man named Addiction. Addiction was on a quest to find Sobriety, the great and powerful being
that could free him from his troubles.
On his quest Addiction kept
suffering setbacks, caused by the terrible fiend Relapse. Fortunately for Addiction,
he met up with a committed and strong friend named Rehab, who was able to assist by providing him with the tools and
the support needed to defeat Relapse
and find Sobriety. Sobriety, upon hearing of the quest and Addiction’s desires to better himself,
changed his name to Recovery, as reward for his efforts and
representative of the choice and commitment he was making to change and move
forward. Note that his name was not changed
to Recovered – an end result, but
instead to Recovery – an on-going
process. Sobriety counselled the newly named Recovery to continue to utilize the skills and tools he had
obtained from Rehab and always
remember the experiences he had learned from along the way, as he continued his
future lifelong quest to become like Sobriety.
The significance of the symbolism in the name change was not lost on
me – there are numerous stories, legends, scriptures, and practices which
utilize the name change as a symbol of a changed and renewed man. What struck me the most in that moment was the
indestructible and amazing ability of man to change. These men, who through bad choices, bad
circumstances, and most likely a tragic combination of both, had ended up
locked away in the dungeons of society, many for a long time. These men, with all their worldly autonomy,
agency, and daily life choices stripped away from them, still had one amazing
power than no prison walls, or hand-cuffs, or standard issue jump suit could
take away from them – the ability to change, and to change for the better.
Some accounts of life changing moments are epic tales of
angelic visions or physical transformations, but we don’t need be struck dumb or
have angels charge us with fiery admonitions to have a change of heart. We only
need the desire, and the right tools to help us fulfill that desire. We just
need to take the sacrament on Sundays, and say our prayers and read our
scriptures and consciously try to be better every day. The change likely won’t be as immediate or dramatic as those caused by angelic visions, but it is constant, and consistent. It is daily rehab – daily renewal
of choices, commitments, and desires – that helps us to progress and become
better day by day. No matter where we are in our own stories, in our own
personal conversions and conversations with God – whether in the winding down
of a long life or the winding up of young one, whether celebrating at the apex of success
with everything in the world at our feet, or sitting in a prison cell with all
our worldly choices and agency stripped away – there is one thing that is never
taken from us, and that is our ability to change, to grow, to choose to become
better, to renew ourselves, to move forward with faith.
Moving Forward
They say the only constant in life is change, but I would like to
respectfully disagree; or rather, amend that to include something else, and
that is the eternal and unbiased consistency of the love of God, and his never
ending patience and care in helping us to adapt and learn from change. The gospel, the atonement, and their power to
renew will always be available to us, no matter our circumstances, if we but
choose to recognize and accept them.
But continue thou in the
things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou
hast learned them. – 2 Tim 3:14
Now, unfortunately – or fortunately I guess, depending on how you
look at it – no matter how much we may want to, we can never force good choices
on others, and as good as we try to be, we will in all likelihood still make
mistakes ourselves. We can and will
hurt, and can and will be hurt by others, no matter how idyllic our aspirations.
But, don’t lose hope, for tomorrow is a new day, a new opportunity; and
remember- faith always points forward, agency is powerful, and we
never lose our potential to change for the better.
