The Savior's Teachings on His Last Tuesday

Tuesday of that last week of the Savior's life began as Monday had with Jesus and his followers passing by the fig tree. Peter, seeing the withered tree, said to Jesus, “Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.” 

And Jesus responded, “Have faith in God.” And went on to explain that with faith whatsoever they prayed for would be given, but that when they prayed they should forgive others.

Upon reaching the temple, Jesus’ authority was challenged by the chief priests and elders, but Jesus sidestepped the challenge and went on teaching the people in parables. As he told them of the wicked husbandmen who killed the master’s son in order to take over the vineyard, you would think the priests would have recognized themselves, but they were too busy plotting and thinking up questions they think will make Him look bad. 

One of them asks, if they should pay tribute to Caesar. In response he asks them to show him a coin. They produce a penny and he says, “Whose image is this?” 

“Caesar’s.” 

He answered, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s” (Luke 20:25). 

The Sadducees and Pharisees continue to ply him with questions, each hoping that Jesus will say something to incite the Romans, or the crowd, or give them cause to arrest Him. The Sadducees, who don’t believe in an afterlife, ask about marriage in the next life. And a lawyer asks the famous question, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” Undaunted, Jesus turns this into a teaching moment instructing them to love God and to love one another. 

In this way He continues teaching with parables but then laments over the fate of Jesusalem. Then once more drawing on the familiar words of the Hallel, Jesus testifies of his own death. But instead of repenting they argue with Him even about that. His response is simply, “I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” (John 12:47).

Sorrow can’t help but fill one’s heart as we read these accounts knowing that Jesus Christ is offering them the greatest gift ever offered to mankind and yet their pride and selfishness blind them so that they reject Eternal Life in exchange for satisfying their vanity.

At this point Jesus leaves, but his disciples follow him and ask several questions concerning the temple. This speech is found in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, and is called the Olivet Discourse or by some the Little Apocalypse. He explains that there will be false Messiahs and that destruction awaits Jerusalem and warns them to beware and to watch themselves at all times. He then goes on to teach them the parables of the ten virgins and the talents and finishes by telling them they will be eventually be judge for their actions. And what will be the criteria? As always His instruction is simple and easy to understand: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

This brief retelling doesn’t begin to capture the depth and breadth of Jesus’ final teachings to the people on that Tuesday before His death. He knows what is coming and in love makes His last pleas for the people to repent and follow Him. But blinded by their sin the majority of the people refuse. Thus the irony begins to unfold; He will suffer and die to redeem the very sin they are at that moment committing if only they will repent.

Oh, The Mistakes I've Made!

I have made and continue to make a lot of mistakes in my life. The older I grow the more it seems that the things I have done wrong in my life come back to haunt me. The other day while working in the kitchen the thought suddenly came into my head of a time when I was in high school when I snubbed a girl. At this point I can't even remember why, but it probably had something to do with fearing my own reputation. As the experience came back to me, it hurt. I wished with all my heart I hadn't avoided the girl who needed a friend; and now--fifty years later--there isn't a thing I can do about it. But there is Someone who can make it up to the girl and heal me.

Living in Truth has taught me that this kind of sorrow is not a negative experience, even if it is painful. Instead it is a healing process and an important one to pass through if we are going to grow closer to our Father in Heaven.

Coming to the point where we realize that we NEED a Savior to make amends for all our mistakes is essential. The important thing is that we pass through the sorrow without becoming depressed and dismayed. The adversary will try to divert us into a path of self-pity with thoughts such as, "I am so terrible! I am never going to make it. I've done so many horrible things. I am awful." You can recognize this kind of misguided thinking because of the preponderance of "I's" in the statements. It is unnecessary pain and is actually selfish thinking.

But sorrow that is part of Living in Truth and spiritual progression is all about the others we have hurt. We sorrow for them, not for ourselves, and wish we had never hurt them. This kind of sorrow is necessary pain that leads us to Christ. It happens when we remember that one of the most beautiful aspects of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is that we have the privilege of learning from our mistakes without being condemned by them.

There Is Help

I don't know if it's the mother in me or the subject I teach or if all teachers feel this way, but I get so attached to my students and when the semester ends I hate to see them go. It honestly hurts. It is especially bad because I know I will never see most of them again and won't even know what happens to them. Will they apply the things we talked about all semester and have successful, happy lives or will they reject the message of the gospel and suffer?

I love these students, and being older I've watched people grow and know what happens when they reject the message of the gospel or become prideful and think they have a better, easier way. It never works. I want so much for all of my students to be happy. But even as the semester ends I watch a few of them make wrong choices and it breaks my heart.

There are always a few who are more concerned with their grade point average than they are their eternal salvation. These students will lie, cheat, and harass me in attempts to get more points than they deserve. I'm thankful these students are a very, small minority, but it still hurts me to watch them throw out everything we have talked about during the semester in an attempt to change a grade.

But their subtle tactics and methods also make me look at my life more carefully to see if I am being honest and upright. The adversary works in very sneaky ways. I can tell by talking to some of these students that they have convinced themselves of their own lies. They blame me for their grades and refuse to be accountable for their own lack of performance. Are there any areas of my life that I do that? It is a crucial question for all of us to ask because it is impossible to repent and take advantage of the Atonement if we deny there is a problem.

But there is one more important thing I've learned from this experience. Perhaps this hurt I feel for my students who try to cheat their way to good grades is a taste of what the Savior feels when we refuse to take responsibility for our own actions and feelings and blame others for our mistakes. I can almost hear Him saying, "All you have to do is repent and I'll take care of it. Don't try to cover it or justify it or deny what you have done. Just repent. I gave my live so that I could help you. Please let me."

Crocheting and Life

Before my battle with Grizelda, I used to crochet a lot. I've made many, many afghans, and the rhythm of my hands as they hook a strand of yarn into a beautiful collage of stitches is extremely relaxing to me. But for some reason ever since Grizelda I haven't crocheted at all until last week when we went on retreat. I can't believe I forgot about how much of a stress release crocheting is.

One of the afghans I did long ago.

the afghans, I love the lessons crocheting teaches me. Crocheting (and a lot of other hand-work) is a lot like life. The afghans I make are a process. They start out as a raw product such as wool on a sheep's back. That wool has to be cut and then washed, carded, spun, and dyed into useable yarn. From that point I take a skein of "string" and using various stitches I hook the yarn in such a way that it becomes a covering that can warm and cuddle and service others. The pattern varies but if handmade even the same pattern will yield variances that give each afghan a beautiful individual identity. Likewise life is a process and if we are patient and submit to the""carding" and "washing" and "dying" and "hooking" and "tying" that are the process of life we become beautiful individuals capable of warming and nurturing others.

But one of the greatest lessons I've learned from crocheting is that if I make a mistake the only way to keep that afghan beautiful is to go back, undo the wrong stitch or stitches and then re-stitch as the pattern directs. It takes time. It's painful to unravel several rows in order to go back to the mistake. It's discouraging. But there is no other way. If you just keep adding rows to the mistake it becomes misshapen, or you have an ugly spot in the afghan that spoils the whole piece.

You already know where I'm going here. Fixing the mistakes in an afghan is like repentance. We can try to move on in life without repenting, but that mistake will affect everything that follows.

I once read that when people sin their emotional growth stops and that's why we find 60 year old people that haven't emotionally matured past 16. But when we repent we alleviate the mistakes of the past so that we can grow and move forward with the pattern of our lives and end up with a beautiful character. Each character will have distinguishing individual talents and abilities, but every one will be beautiful!

I am so happy to be crocheting again!

Coming Back

A wonderful part of the Good News! is that change is possible, coming back to the gospel is possible, being gathered in the arms of the Good Shepherd and carried back to the fold is possible. But more than possible, it is wonderful.

Those who have tasted of this mercy know of its joy and are eager to help others find their way back. With this in mind, the Savior gave three parables to help us know not only how to help others come back but when to do it. In Luke 15 Jesus first tells us of the shepherd of a hundred sheep who loses one. When the 99 are safely in the fold, the shepherd goes out to seek the lost one. We don’t know how the sheep was lost. Perhaps he wandered off intentionally or perhaps he just got distracted and before he realized it, everyone else was gone and he didn’t know where they were. Despite how it happened the shepherd, knowing he had stewardship for the flock, found the sheep and brought him back.

The second parable is about a woman who lost a coin. Now a coin has no volition and so in this case it is the caretaker’s fault that the coin is lost. So the woman, knowing she is at fault, works hard to reclaim the lost coin.

When we compare these parables to our own lives we see that sometimes a sheep in our flock is lost not for anything we have done but we have a responsibility to go out and bring them back. In the case of the coin sometimes we drive someone away by offending or perhaps a misunderstanding has taken place and again we have a responsibility to do all we can to mend the breach that has caused the person to be lost.

But in the last parable of the prodigal son, the father does not go after the son. In this case it is willful disobedience on the part of the lost son, and the father knows he can do nothing but wait and pray and hope for a change of heart that will bring his son home. But notice that instead of going into depression, or thinking himself deplorable, or becoming defensive by blaming others for the loss of his son, he waits hopefully and is watching for the return of the son so that when the son does return the father sees him a long way off and welcomes him. In other words, sometimes there is nothing we can do but pray and wait.

A Good Christian

Repentance is a U-turn

What is a good Christian? Some would say it is a person who does everything exactly the way Christ taught—someone who keeps all the commandments perfectly. But we would never say that a good body is one that is never hurt or in which nothing ever goes wrong. There isn’t such a thing. Instead a good body is one that heals rapidly, one that resists illness so that the person doesn’t get sick as often as others, one that when bruised or cut mends fast and well.

Likewise a good Christian is not someone who never does anything wrong. Good Christians turn back to Christ the moment it is discovered they are off course. Good Christians repent well and fast not because they reason that it is the right thing to do or because they are trying to please those around them but because the Light of Christ within them leads them to do it. It is just who they are.

As C. S. Lewis said, a good Christian “does not think God will love us because we are good but that God will make us good because He loves us just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.”

The Mathematics of Life

I’m not a mathematician. 

I do good to get my checkbook balanced and marvel at people who can make numbers mean something. But despite my lack of mathematical talent, I have learned some important lessons from the little I can do with numbers.

One thing I’ve learned is that when you make a mistake in a mathematical problem you can NEVER arrive at the right answer if you just keep doing more adding and subtracting. Once a mistake is made it sends you down a wrong road and no matter how well you multiply and divide from that point on you are still on the wrong path to solving the problem. The only way to get back on course to finding the right answer is to back up until you find the mistake, correct it, and go forward from there.

Life is like that. When we discover we are on the wrong path, the only thing that put us right again is to go back to the mistake, repair it (repent) best we can, and then move forward. If instead of correcting our path, we just keep plodding on, we only go farther and farther down the wrong road.

From my experience hiking and walking, I’ve also learned that the sooner I turn around after discovering I’m on the wrong road, the easier the journey is. The longer I persist on the wrong path the more difficult it is to return to the right path.

(There are a lot of advantages to getting old. One is that you learn a lot of good lessons even from things like the arithmetic you hated in third grade!)

More Truth Tools

The Good News today is that there are more

Truth Tools than what we talked about yesterday. In the Doctrine and Covenants 59:4 we are told that the reward for those who are seeking Zion, in other words seeking to be pure in heart, is that they will be ”crowned with blessings from above, yea, and with commandments not a few.” Most of us don’t think of commandments as blessings, but the commandments are Truth Tools—amazing Truth Tools that "crown" our lives if we let them.

One of the most powerful of the Truth Tools is prayer. When the negative feelings begin to swell within us calling upon God can dispel them. Another Truth Tool, Forgiveness, works not only on the negative emotion being generated by the offense we are holding a grudge against, but when we forgive and let go of the bad thoughts, we find that other negative feelings melt away also. Forgiving others works in the soul like taking a warm shower works on the body. You may get in the shower because your feet and hands are dirty, but your whole body gets cleaned and it feels so good.

Repentance, fasting, and the Sacrament are also powerful Truth Tools. When we take the time to analyze our lives and identify what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong and then go to the Sacrament Altar ready to sacrifice the things we are doing wrong and commit to do better the coming week,

we are empowered. Sin generates negative emotion and feelings

and when we give up the sin the negative feelings go with it.

In short, these and other commandments are really an enormous blessing in our lives.

They are Truth Tools that allow us to rid our lives of the negative feelings that push us into the Pit of Illusion and allow us to live in Truth where peace, joy, happiness and love abound. As D&C 59 goes on to say, “He who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come” (23).

Musings While I Sewed

I was sewing yesterday. My better half went to California (He went there to run a half marathon and came in second in his age group!), and with him gone I could take up the whole kitchen with machine, cutting board, ironing board, and mess. I made Roman shades for my den and since I didn't have a pattern and was just "winging it" I also did a lot of unpicking.

While sewing and unsewing and sewing again I had a lot of thinking time and I began to realize the metaphor in sewing. One little stitich at a time that material soon became a functional window dressing. It took awhile, but stitch by stitch it was accomplished. Mistakes were made, but like the repentance process, I unpicked the incorrect stitches and started over. Process. Patience. Repentance. Begin again. Process. Patience. Isn't that how you make a good life?

I think that now every time I look at those shades, I'm going to think about life. But with life I have a pattern given to me by the Savior and if I just follow it, I won't have any unpicking to do! What a blessing!

Today is the Day

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. We’ve all heard that, but do we believe it? I like to ponder the implications. For one thing, it means that each day is a new beginning. No matter what happened in the past, this is a new day. I can’t change the past, but the Savior can atone for anything that needs to be changed. So I don’t need to worry or fret or become depressed because of it. A new day is like a clean slate that I can write upon. What has happened in the past is erased from the slate and I can write whatever I want on the slate that is this day. I just need to stay close to God and do what is right in this moment—the only moment I have control over.

Another thing that comes to mind when I hear this saying is hope. It rings with hope. I can repent. I can change. I can grow because of Jesus Christ. That is what hope is all about. Without Him there would be no hope, no future, but because of Him there is always hope. I just need to remember and cling to that hope instead of heeding the competing cacophony of doom and despair that fills the world.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life implies that my agency is key to my life. I am the one who chooses. I am the one with the power to make this day a good one. No one else can do it for me. So I’m going to make it the best day I possibly can. And tomorrow? Well, when it comes I’ll consider it. For now, I only need to think about today.

Spiritual House Cleaning

There is an interesting parable in the New Testament that I love. It goes like this: “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith,I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation” (Matt 12:43-45).

What this parable is teaching us is that when we cast away a bad habit or repent of a sin, it is like “cleaning out the house.” But there is a danger here that we need to beware of. The old habit or sin is comfortable in the old place and will want to return. If it comes back and finds the place empty, swept out, it will move right back in to the empty spot.

What this means it that It isn’t enough to cast away the bad. We also need to fill the “house” with something good so that when the castaway sin or habit desires to return there is no room for it.

Refreshed and Restored

In the Old Testament the Lord calls a city to repentance and explains what He will do for them if they will repent. He says, “Behold, I will bring [the city] health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth” (Jeremiah 33:6). This is the same promise He offers to each one of us if we will repent and turn to Him. We’ve all heard that we should repent. We all know we should keep the commandments. But sometimes we don’t stop to think about the “health” and “cure” that comes to us through repentance.

Repentance is one of the gospel principles that help us live in truth. When we do something wrong, our conscience bothers us. We are in pain—unnecessary pain. But by repenting our conscience can be healed and we are cured of the unnecessary pain. It is interesting that one of the Hebrew words that is translated as repent (shub) means “to turn back, return” or “to restore, refresh, repair.”

That is what repentance is all about—turning back to God, restoring, refreshing, repairing us. Repentance is all about getting rid of unnecessary pain and being healed and restored to God.

Drink or Dig?

The prophet Jeremiah taught at the same time Lehi did in Jerusalem, but instead of taking him away to a promised land, the Lord instructed him to stay with the people and urge them to return to God. He obeyed but his efforts were in vain. The people refused to repent and brought upon themselves the very destruction Jeremiah and Lehi had warned them about.

At one point the Lord told the people through Jeremiah that they had committed two evils, “They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Reading this you and I get a sense of the meaning, but the intensity of it is lost on us—people who turn on a tap to get hot or cold water and then watch it run down the drain without a thought as to what is happening.

In Jeremiah’s day water was a valuable commodity. Recognized as absolutely necessary for human existence, water procuring occupied much of their time and thoughts. And once procured, protecting that water became equally as important. Every family member would be constantly reminded of the importance of water, and no one would dare waste water. It was much too precious. Water was life.

So when the Lord offers them a fountain (source) of living waters they should have rejoiced and drunk freely. Instead they rebelled and spent much effort to build themselves cisterns that broke and were unable to hold water which meant they went thirsty and died.

This is difficult to understand. When the Lord says, here drink from the living waters I’m giving to you, why would anyone turn their backs on that water and instead go to all the work of building and trying to fill their own cistern? It makes no sense, and yet repeatedly throughout the history of mankind we see people turn away from the life-sustaining waters offered by the Lord and instead spending a great deal of time and effort in an attempt to build leaky cisterns.

The question this makes me ask myself is, “Am I drinking from the Source or digging my own well?” Drinking is easy. Digging is hard. But the adversary does a very good job of confusing those two.