"Line Upon LIne"

There are many reasons for not being able to understand gospel principles. As Nephi explains to his brothers, and as is evident with Corianton, sin can often keep us from understanding. When our lives are cluttered with sin the ways of God just don’t make sense. But sin isn’t always the problem. Sometimes we don’t understand because we haven’t been taught the principle yet. In that case we need to study and search and pray until we do understand. Other times the reason we don’t understand is that what we are questioning is dependent upon principles that come before it and if we didn’t understand those correctly, we can’t understand the new principle. 

As 2 Nephi 28:30 explains:  “For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom.”

We’ve all heard this and understand that we learn one precept at a time. But inherent in this principle is an unstated concept that is also important. If learning is done one principle at a time “precept upon precept” like a mason building a brick wall, then one of the reasons we might not understand is that the first brick is misplaced or not plumb or crooked, so that succeeding bricks won’t fit right. In other words, if a basic principle is not understood, the principles that build on that one won’t be comprehensible. They won’t fit.

But through repentance, study, and humbly analyzing our present understandings we can grow “line upon line,” and “precept upon precept,” and make for ourselves a very firm, straight, enduring brick wall of gospel understanding.

Informal Church

Ben got himself ready for church.

We made it home! There's more snow in Everette, Washington, than there is in Utah! Even though we were snowed in and didn't get to do the things we'd planned, we had a wonderful time. Especially touching for me was having our own church service. We sang, we prayed, and each one of us gave a short talk. It was wonderful to hear my young grandchildren bear testimony of Jesus Christ and of the restoration of the gospel. It was exiting to learn from them. And that reminded me of something I'd read from Elder Henry B. Eyring many years before that I looked up again this morning.

In his book To Draw Closer to God, Elder Eyring tells about how we can learn from anyone in any situation and then he relates the story of a time when he was young and found himself bored during a Sacrament meeting. But as he looked at his father, a highly intelligent academic and a master of the scriptures, he was amazed to see him deeply engrossed in the talk.

When walking home from church with his father, Elder Eyring took the opportunity to ask his father what he thought about the meeting and his father said it was wonderful. Puzzled, Elder Eyring tried to summon the courage to ask how it was wonderful when his father, as if reading his mind, started to laugh. "Hal, let me tell you something. Since I was a very young man, I have taught myself to do something in a church meeting. When the speaker begins, I listen carefully and ask myself what it is he is trying to say. Then, once I think I know what he is trying to accomplish, I give myself a sermon on that subject."  They walked on in silence for a moment and then his father said, "Hal, since then I have never been to a bad meeting."

Since I read that, I've come to realize that I have a responsibility to learn and that no matter who is teaching I can learn if I have the spirit with me. Sunday, in a very informal meeting, I learned from a five year old and a nine year old more about what it means to be a child of God.

Opening Windows and Doors

Pride shows its head in hundreds of ways and is disguised sometimes even as a virtue. A woman once asked me a gospel question. In order to answer her question I needed to back up and explain a point that laid the foundation so that she could understand the answer to her questions. But as I started to explain, she thought I was moving on to a new subject and quickly stopped me. “No, don’t tell me anything else,” she said. “I want to learn it myself so I can experience that ahh-hha moment of discovery.” So our conversation ended.

I’ve often thought of that encounter and wondered how often I’ve cut short what I could have learned because of pride.

There is so very much to learn and that’s one of the reasons God has given us parents, teachers, friends and others who can help us. We can't possible learn it all ourselves. When others teach us what they know it opens up new doors and windows of possibility which leads us on to new things to learn. In other words, there will always be plenty to learn. And all new things learned lead to new possibilities of implementing gospel principles in our lives and making us better people. The more we can learn and the faster we learn it the better.

 

So build yourself a house of learning with lots of windows and doors and let anyone who can open them up for you. Then rejoice in the new view you have!

Receptors of Truth

At the end of each semester, students are asked to evaluate their classes. There are many items concerning the teacher and the class on the survey that are simply answered with multiple choice categories. But at the end of the survey the students can leave comments. Last semester I received a very interesting comment. One of the students said, “She tells thirty year old stories.”

When I first read that I laughed so hard I cried. Evidently he thought that because my experiences were more than a few years old they weren’t relevant or couldn’t have any meaning for him. But the reason I was laughing so hard is that it was a Book of Mormon class and the experiences we were reading and discussing were over two-thousand years old. If he didn’t like my thirty year old stories, did he also dismiss the teachings of the two-thousand year old stories?

This experience has made me stop and think about how I discount things around me. Do I refuse to learn from someone else because they are old, or poor, or different, or annoying, or any other personal characteristic? When we live in Truth we accept what is before us at its face value and not on the merits of the person speaking or the situation. We evaluate the things around us based on their value, seeking for Truths that will enrich and encourage us and dismissing things that will harm or discourage us not because of who is saying it or when it was said but because of the Truth it contains. 

When we open our hearts to Truth, it is amazing to discover how much Truth the Lord sends us in any given day and in many surprising ways.

Teaching and Learning

Have I ever told you how much I LOVE teaching! This semester I have had some exceptionally good classes. Of course, all semesters are basically good, but this semester in most of my classes the students have opened up and added to the discussion more than usual. They have been humble and eager to learn. Surprisingly that doesn’t always happen.

One semester I had a young returned missionary that was visibly upset when I was teaching. Finally one day he angrily said to me, “I’ve been studying the Book of Mormon every day for three years now and the things you are teaching me aren’t in this book.” I invited him to come to my office and talk through the problem and as he talked I realized that if I ever taught anything he didn’t already know he figured it was false doctrine. Filled with pride he didn’t see how I (who had been studying the Book for over 35 years) could know any more than he did. That kind of attitude in a class affects the entire class and makes it difficult to teach.

But this semester has been different. This morning in my first class I found myself gratefully looking out over the students as we sang the opening hymn and feeling an overwhelming outpouring of love for them. And the discussion that followed was wonderful. I love watching the lights go off in their eyes as they learn, and today there was even a startled vocal gasp as something dawned on one student. I know it is not me. I realize that the spirit is teaching them, but I feel so blessed to be a facilitator and a witness to the process. 

I’ve also learned from all of this the importance of being a good student. In Sunday School or Relief Society or Sacrament Meeting, anyplace where we go to be taught the gospel of Jesus Christ, our own attitude determines what or if the Spirit can teach us. Even if a teacher is over prepared or  under prepared, we can learn if the Spirit is with us and we are open and teachable. That reminds me. Have I ever told you how much I LOVE learning? Well, I do!

Enjoying Life

I’ve been tending grandsons and it has brought back a lot of memories. Tired memories! Happy memories! Teasing memories! Joyful memories! And even “is this really life?” memories. It has been fun.

The reason I am tending is that their mother, D4, is running the Ragnar Wasatch Back with D5 and my sister and her daughter and some others. (There are 12 people to a team.) I think they are all crazy, but they love it. The Ragnar Wasatch Back goes for 187.8 miles of rugged country in the Wasatch mountains of Utah. My daughters were responsible for three legs of 5 to 9 miles each. The teams run all day and all night for up to a day and a half depending on how fast they are. It makes me tired to think about it!

But, as I said, they love it, and it is teaching them wonderful things about life, nature, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is what is interesting to me. When people love the Lord, he teaches them about himself through what else they love—as long as they put Him first. Whatever language, whatever interests, whatever likes we have the Lord uses those to draw us closer to Him.

So enjoy what you love and watch for what it teaches you!

"In Our Own Language"

A friend of mine told me of a man he taught while on his mission many years ago in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The man was old and had never learned to read nor could he write his name, but when the missionaries taught him the gospel he believed what he was taught and joined the Church. Surprisingly, as he thirsted for more knowledge he found he could read scriptures. You’d hand him a newspaper and he could not decipher one word, but you’d hand him a Bible and he could read it all. It was amazing!

One day the missionary was teaching a Cottage Meeting in the old man’s modest home. My friend mentioned something about the world being round and was startled when the old man whacked him across the back of the legs with his cane saying, “The Bible says the world has four corners and there’ll be no teaching of false doctrine in my home.”

While this man experienced an obvious miracle, it is important to realize that the Lord manages to teach all of us in whatever way is best for us. As Nephi said, “For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding” (2 Nephi 31:3).

If we have the desire, the Lord will teach us on the level we understand even if it takes a miracle. But by “according to their language” He doesn’t just mean English or Spanish. He speaks through our understanding of life and the things around us. If we like to garden he’ll teach us about His ways as we garden or cook or fix engines or play sports. If we are engineers or doctors or nurses or parents or teachers or mechanics, the Lord will give us insights and knowledge according to what we understand and through the things we do, if we are watching and wanting to learn.

Picture: "Heavenly Hands" by Greg Olsen  picturesofjesus4you.com/428.html

Just Ask

All of us have heard the wonderful verses of scripture (James 1:5-6) that motivated Joseph Smith to go into the grove to pray. We’ve heard them so often that sometimes we fail to really pay attention to what they say. We hear the verse and think “We are to pray in order to learn,” but don’t even notice the rest of what is taught. But there is much more!

In verse five we are promised that God will give to all people (not just to Joseph Smith and not just to prophets, but to all of us!) liberally, which means “marked by generosity.” And despite what we ask or how often we ask, he will not upbraid us. Upbraid is a word we don’t hear much anymore. It means to criticize severely or to find fault with. In other words, we can ask God and He will not criticize us or fault us for asking.

That is very comforting to me. Anything I want or need to know—it doesn’t matter how big or small a concern or questions—I can ask God about and He will not reproach me or scold me. Never! In other, more positive words, I have a Father who wants to teach me everything He knows. I can’t take it all in at once, but question at a time, line upon line, I can learn from Him. All I need to do is ask.

Words

I often tell people that I have learned more about the gospel of Jesus Christ from a dictionary than any other source. They usually look at me like I’m crazy, but I’m not. (Don’t ask my family to verify that!) At any rate, let me show you what I mean. There are many words that we think we know and so we don’t ever look them up in a dictionary. For example let’s look at the word temple. My dictionary says that a temple is “a place set aside by a prophet for observation.” A second definition (my favorite) is “a place where one gets one’s bearings on the universe.” That expanded my feeling for what a temple is.

Elder John A. Widtsoe taught that “The endowment and the temple work as revealed by the Lord to the Prophet Joseph Smith fall clearly into four distinct parts: The preparatory ordinances; the giving of instruction by lectures and representations; covenants; and finally, tests of knowledge.” (“Temple Worship” The Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine 12[April 1921]:58.)

Let’s look at one of those words. Our word endowment means (1) To provide with property, income, or a source of income. (2) To equip or supply with a talent or quality. It is composed of the prefix en which means “to put into” and the root word dower which means “a natural gift; a dowry.” This definition is much more meaningful when we remember that throughout the scriptures the Lord is depicted at the bridegroom and the people of the church as the bride. Therefore, the endowment is the dowry given to the bride. It is a gift of power, priesthood power and those who are obedient to the covenants made in the temple will be empowered.

I hope I’ve got you curious. Next time you go to the temple, a church meeting, or study the scriptures remember just one word and then look it up and see how it enhances your understanding. A word doesn’t have to be sesquipedalian before you head for a dictionary! Words you’ve known for years can contain subtle nuances that have escaped your understanding. This means that looking up even the simplest of words can enlighten you. Try it!