Unrealized Dreams

South Carolina Gamecock running back Marcus Lattimore's injury reminded me just how devastating life can be and how in a moment it can all change. Long sought after dreams and childhood goals can come to naught instantly. In October 1995 I left St. Petersburg, FL seeking for a better life for myself. I saw myself heading down that path I promised I would never travel. I decided to pack up and head to KY to the job corps there. I was promised to learn a good trade and to be placed in another city to start a career once I completed my education. I took the test for my GED in Nov passed and finished up a trade by March, I was ready for a new adventure.
Hopes were dashed though, I was only 17 and could not legally be sent to live on my own. I was so upset, I felt that they'd lured me out there and lied about the opportunities that lay ahead. In my immaturity I would not listen to reason to just take another trade and wait 3 more months. I decided to go back home. I came home angry, with a chip on my shoulder. My thoughts were something like this, "there is no hope for a black man in this country", "there's no escape from the hood"...etc. With those thoughts I lost all hope and fell back into the ways those thoughts take you.
At the time I was devastated and the consequences of those next 3 years have been a headache for me. But because of those situations I am better able to see the hand of our loving Father. As I read in Mosiah 24 last night I felt impressed and have heard the same many times that my life went the way it did to show me that none could deliver me from bondage except it was by the power of an unseen hand. I now see the wisdom of it all. That now I can be a living witness of the real power of His deliverance. That is my call, to live my life in a manner to show that there is a God, who is concerned about us here and now. The God that I honor is not a god who requires us to bow before him day and a night endlessly praising him with our words. His heaven is filled with beings who "do", who work to fulfill His work. His work is to bring about our eternal happiness.
His plan has not only eternal, but also temporal salvation. He is concerned about our careers, our education, our appetites, and our simple desires. He is concerned about these things because having these in order will secure eternal education, and refined appetites, and our work will never cease as His never ceases.
You see my friends, whatever station in life you find yourself, whether from a ghetto or the hills of suburbia, the Lord placed you there to stand as a witness. He knows your desires and where you are is the place were you are most likely to realize your true potential, if you seek His strength. 
This is why I love Him, because He is concerned for how were are here and now, and not just were we will live eternally. You can lean on his ample arm daily, because He is there.

Behold Your Little Ones

After His resurrection, 40 day ministry, and finally His dramatic exit from Jerusalem, the Savior went home. Undoubtedly to a warm and festive welcome from all the hosts of heaven. He had overcome all! I can only imagine though that the ceremonies and feast were short lived as that there was yet still work to do on the Earth.  He received further instruction from the Father that He would need to visit now as a resurrected being, all the house of Israel.
We have in our possession one such account. This was among the people here living in the land of ancient America. They had waited for 600 years for the promised Messiah to show Himself and to give them further direction. He did so, and what He taught them was the same message; the need for repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and love. They'd waited so long and the message was simple.

During His visit we have a very moving account of the tender love that He has for children. We read that, "he commanded that their little children should be brought. So they brought their little children and set them down upon the ground round about him, and Jesus stood in the midst; and the multitude gave way till they had all been brought unto him. And it came to pass that when they had all been brought, and Jesus stood in the midst, he commanded the multitude that they should kneel down upon the ground...he himself also knelt upon the earth; and behold he prayed unto the Father, and the things which he prayed cannot be written, and the multitude did bear record who heard him. And after this manner do they bear record: The eye hath never seen, neither hath the ear heard, before, so great and marvelous things as we saw and heard Jesus speak unto the Father; And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father. And they arose from the earth, and he said unto them: Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, my joy is full. And when he had said these words, he wept, and the multitude bare record of it, and he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them. And when he had done this he wept again; And he spake unto the multitude, and said unto them: Behold your little ones. And as they looked to behold they cast their eyes towards heaven, and they saw the heavens open, and they saw angels descending out of heaven as it were in the midst of fire; and they came down and encircled those little ones about, and they were encircled about with fire; and the angels did minister unto them." (3 Nephi 17: 11-24)

A few chapters later we read, "And it came to pass that he did teach and minister unto the children of the multitude of whom hath been spoken, and he did loose their tongues, and they did speak unto their fathers great and marvelous things, even greater than he had revealed unto the people; and he loosed their tongues that they could utter." (3 Nephi 26:14)

Today I witnessed that same miracle as I saw child after child one by one having their tongues loosed and spake unto us, their mothers and fathers marvelous things. They witnessed of Jesus and of how keeping His commandments would assure us happiness here and eternal life there with them. The Holy Ghost did bear record that what those little 4 to 11 year old children spake were true. I was moved.

A Call to Love

As I drove back home from taking the kids to school yesterday I noticed the trees burdened with the snows that had recently fell. They were caught unprepared by not having ample time to drop their leaves. The scene almost instantly had me thinking of the burdens that we all carry. Some because we have made wrong choices and others only because we are mortal and are subject to the trails that living brings, sickness, poverty, riches, death...etc. Many of these trees had no one to help and thus they bowed beneath the load and some limbs could not hold the weight and tumbled to the ground. Some of those broken limbs causes more damage to unexpected individuals.
So it is with our burdens, when there are none to help they become too much to bear and we too break under the heavy load. Some of us may be too proud to ask for the needed help, while others of us are pleading for it. In either circumstance Christ stands waiting for us to unload them upon Him. In His carrying of the cross it was symbolic of His willingness to carry all of our burdens too. Come unto Him. He has repeatedly stated that the arms of mercy are extended all the day long (Alma 5:33)

Those of us that have entered the waters of baptism and have taken upon us the name of Christ are under obligation and covenant to bear one another burdens. To mourn with those that mourn, and to be witnesses of Him wherever we may find ourselves. Whether we are rich or poor, we have been blessed with gifts of the Spirit to accomplish this great work. The Lord is calling upon us to be the savor or the world. To hold up right principles. To be kind and gentle, to love one another in a world that is in so much need of it. I only write to remind us to not allow the things that divide us to define us, but let our common belief and covenant heal all of our Father's children. I love Him, because He first loved me. I love you because He loves us. I know He lives.

Come Follow Me

This is the invitation to us all, like the early disciples who left their boats filled with fish and their nets that needed mending, to follow Christ. The very phrase itself denotes that we are to go we He has gone and were He ultimately ended up, gaining eternal life.
We have many leaders in our time who beckon us to follow them but alas in many instances they themselves will not do or go as they would have us. This is not so with Jesus. We read in Alma 7: 11-13 "And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind...And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities...Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh..." What this means is, that our Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost "know" all things but yet it was so important the He experience trials, sorrow, hunger, and disappointment, so He would really "know" what it is like to be man. To know how to heal us and to help us in our daily walk. We read that Jesus wept with His friends at the death of their brother. He knew that Lazarus would be raised in just a few moments, yet He wept! He has real feelings, those same feelings that we all have.
This is why I follow Christ, because He has walked the path and knows the way. He understands my sorrow. I can not say in the day of judgment that He just doesn't get it. He walked amongst us and yet did no sin. He was crucified and yet no word of anger escaped His lips, instead the words are "Father, forgive them..." So when He says to love your enemies, He has moral authority, because He was able to love. He says unto us, repent and be baptized because before He preached it, He was baptized, even though there was no sin in Him. He asks us to pray always, and this is what we find Him doing throughout His life. How many times is it mentioned that He was found, either in the synagogues or the Temple, often. He was always found doing good.
This is a leader we can truly follow, not because He says but because He does what He says. He is trustworthy and left His home to come to earth, to be ridiculed, spit upon, scourged, left friendless and alone on the cross, even the Father for a moment withdrew from Him, and thus in his agony crying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Matthew 27:46 And finally to die. His whole life was dedicated to us. It was a gift in so many ways. To show us the way, and to ultimately do for us what we can not do for ourselves, atone for our sins. I love Him, I know He loves us and all He does is invites us to follow Him because His way is the way of happiness. He is real!

The Invitation

Last night while laying in bed I thought upon my life when I was a youth. I do this often but something was different this time. It felt more like a dream instead of memories. It dawned on me that I'm gaining some traction in my fight against my sins and shortcomings. That the healing that I've been seeking is progressing. I had to thank Father for His patience with me and His willingness to stick it out with me while I work out my salvation, literally in "fear and trembling." Philippians 2:12

I woke up this morning with this thought on my mind, how blessed I've been these past few years. Then I thought of how important it is to let others know of the constant struggle there is had when an individual is trying to live by the laws of the Gospel.  The laws of the Celestial Kingdom where our Father lives requires perfection. We must rid ourselves of selfishness, greed, unholy lusts...etc... These things take time, so this is why He calls upon us, DAILY, to repent. What I've discovered is that when we begin to accept His ways the word "repent" becomes an invitation and not a word that feels like a thorn. We are invited to come to Christ all the time Alma 5:33.We are invited to come unto to Christ and be perfected in him through His mercy and grace.

We are taught that this is the time for us to prepare to meet God, that today is the day and there will come a time when no work can be performed. That day does not come however until we are resurrected. We have until that time to overcome everything that keeps us from fully being committed. Some of us will need that much time to overcome. Paul taught in 2 Corinthians 12 of the weaknesses he had but that someday they would be made strengths. While Jesus' body lay in the tomb His spirit was in the world of spirits where we all go to await the day of our resurrection. There, he organized and taught and sent others to those who had not qualified for His presence. Thus in His infinite mercy giving us a little more time to get it right. We find this in 1 Peter 3:18-20.

The drawback to waiting till then is that it takes much longer. Elder Melvin J. Ballard taught,

"Some folks hope they may lose their sins in the grave. There is no hope that sins will be lost in the grave, for 'as we lay our bodies down so shall we take them up again,' it is written.

What we will discover is this, that the spirit takes upon itself the habits of the body. There are many spirits that have come into mortality free, that have become enslaved through yielding to the cravings of the flesh. They will find when they come out of the body that they are tainted and tinctured with all the lust and desires of the body. Instead of being free to rise to glorious heights, they are more or less earthbound, craving the things that they have yielded to in the flesh, and they will discover too that after they have stepped out of this life they are separated from the body and have no power over that element, but the reformation will have to go forward in the spirit. They will also discover that every emotion and feeling will be intensified when they have passed out of mortality, so that it will be much more difficult to conquer and master and overcome when we go out of this life than here and now.

This is the one and only time most fitting and appropriate. Now is the time to repent.

Another thing we will discover is that when we are separated from this body we will feel in bondage...

Man and woman will not come up in the resurrection of the dead until they have conquered and mastered and have overcome. That is why it will take some a thousand years longer to get ready for their resurrection than others who will come forth in the morning of the first resurrection. So there is not only safety and protection against the assaults of the enemy of our souls here and now by adhering to these simple gospel principles which the Master has given. Such adherence will not only steel and fortify us against all the assaults of the enemy of our souls and protect us in this present conflict but will also bring us eternal joy and happiness; for blessed is he that overcometh, for unto him shall all things be given.

Let us therefore uphold these standards. Let us cleave to them and we shall discover that though Satan shall rage in the hearts of men—and he will—we shall stand in holy places and shall not be moved and shall be with the victorious."

So we see the need to start today, this is why Father has sent angels, prophets, teachers, parents, and missionaries, so that we may have time to work out the sins that so easily lead us astray. 

I know that Jesus has done His part, but we must still do ours by repenting ans leaning on his power and promises that we can do better. I love Him.