It is November, season of thanksgiving. Last year I posted a gratitude post every day of November and I've decided to do it again this year. I'm doing this for myself. This talk by Elder Eyring explains why. Even if you don't see yourself as an overtly religious person, writing daily the things you are grateful for can brighten your life. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year.
So here's my two cents on Elder Eyring's talk from October 2007 - O Remember, Remember. This talk goes hand in hand with the one I posted last week.
My comments are in blue and italics like this.
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When our children were very small, I started to write down a few things about what happened every day. Let me tell you how that got started. I came home late from a Church assignment. It was after dark. My father-in-law, who lived near us, surprised me as I walked toward the front door of my house. He was carrying a load of pipes over his shoulder, walking very fast and dressed in his work clothes. I knew that he had been building a system to pump water from a stream below us up to our property.
He smiled, spoke softly, and then rushed past me into the darkness to go on with his work. I took a few steps toward the house, thinking of what he was doing for us, and just as I got to the door, I heard in my mind—not in my own voice—these words: “I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.”
I've had these sorts of promptings before, to write things down in my journal. Often I don't understand why I should write it down. That type of writing is different than any other, for me. I write without concern for an audience, it is the most honest portrayal of my feelings and experiences, from my point of view. I have found that interesting things happen in my mind when I write in my journal. There is a comprehension of life that doesn't come if I rush from one thing to another without mental processing. This process helps me on many levels, a few are: comprehension of blessings, greater understanding of other's actions, clarity of purpose, and the realization that I need to apologize. This then helps me when I pray, to lay my life before God and process with him those things I have learned from my journal writing.
I went inside. I didn’t go to bed. Although I was tired, I took out some paper and began to write. And as I did, I understood the message I had heard in my mind. I was supposed to record for my children to read, someday in the future, how I had seen the hand of God blessing our family. Grandpa didn’t have to do what he was doing for us. He could have had someone else do it or not have done it at all. But he was serving us, his family, in the way covenant disciples of Jesus Christ always do. I knew that was true. And so I wrote it down, so that my children could have the memory someday when they would need it.
I don't know how my journal writings will effect my children. Honestly I try not to think about it too much when I write, or I'm won't be as honest as I should be. It is my hope that if I am real and honest in my journal writing my children will know the real me. They will see that I wasn't perfect, they will better understand my personal struggles and recognize my faith in the midst of it all. I don't want to erect an impossible image of myself. I want my daughters to know that being a mom is hard work, but worth it. I want my children to know that marriage is hard, how to work at it, and that their father and I had to work constantly to retain a good relationship. I want my children to know that I had questions about morals, faith, doctrine, relationships and it all. Hopefully when they see that I questioned, and eventually had those questions answered, it will give them strength to continue when they have questions. I just don't see much use in journal writing if I'm not open and honest.
I wrote down a few lines every day for years. I never missed a day no matter how tired I was or how early I would have to start the next day. Before I would write, I would ponder this question: “Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?” As I kept at it, something began to happen. As I would cast my mind over the day, I would see evidence of what God had done for one of us that I had not recognized in the busy moments of the day. As that happened, and it happened often, I realized that trying to remember had allowed God to show me what He had done.
This is true. If we don't take the time to concretely recognize the great things, even if small, in our lives then we don't remember them, we don't take an accounting, we take them for granted.
More than gratitude began to grow in my heart. Testimony grew. I became ever more certain that our Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers. I felt more gratitude for the softening and refining that come because of the Atonement of the Savior Jesus Christ. And I grew more confident that the Holy Ghost can bring all things to our remembrance—even things we did not notice or pay attention to when they happened.
This is an important part of prayer - recognition of the prayer being answered. I believe I can pray to God for even the smallest of things, even a bad hair day. But how readily will God continue to bless me if I don't recognize the answers when he gives them? It can teach us how God works if we recognize how he answers our prayers.
The years have gone by. My boys are grown men. And now and then one of them will surprise me by saying, “Dad, I was reading in my copy of the journal about when …” and then he will tell me about how reading of what happened long ago helped him notice something God had done in his day.
My point is to urge you to find ways to recognize and remember God’s kindness. It will build our testimonies. You may not keep a journal. You may not share whatever record you keep with those you love and serve. But you and they will be blessed as you remember what the Lord has done. You remember that song we sometimes sing: “Count your many blessings; name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”
A moment of irreverence now- Count Your Many Blessings will forever be associated with Elmer Fudd for me. When DH and I were dating he would lean over and sing this song to me in an Elmer Fudd voice during church. Now the kids even know this private joke. So I always look very very happy to be counting my blessings when singing this song.
It won’t be easy to remember. Living as we do with a veil over our eyes, we cannot remember what it was like to be with our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, in the premortal world; nor can we see with our physical eyes or with reason alone the hand of God in our lives. Seeing such things takes the Holy Ghost. And it is not easy to be worthy of the Holy Ghost’s companionship in a wicked world.
This reminds me of Elder Scott's quote from last week's talk, of trying to listen to the spirit while influenced by bad things- "When such influences are present, it is like trying to savor the delicate flavor of a grape while eating a jalapeño pepper. Both flavors are present, but one completely overpowers the other. In like manner, strong emotions overcome the delicate promptings of the Holy Spirit." This week I have remembered that quote and it influenced my opinion in one huge area of my life - music. I think what a person's spirit is sensitive to can be a little different from person to person but this particular area is one I could improve in and it would allow the spirit to have greater influence for good in my life.
That is why forgetting God has been such a persistent problem among His children since the world began. Think of the times of Moses, when God provided manna and in miraculous and visible ways led and protected His children. Still, the prophet warned the people who had been so blessed, as prophets always have warned and always will: “Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life.”
This is why prayer and scripture study should be daily habits. We forget too easily.
And the challenge to remember has always been the hardest for those who are blessed abundantly. Those who are faithful to God are protected and prospered. That comes as the result of serving God and keeping His commandments. But with those blessings comes the temptation to forget their source. It is easy to begin to feel the blessings were granted not by a loving God on whom we depend but by our own powers. The prophets have repeated this lament over and over:
“And thus we can behold how false, and also the unsteadiness of the hearts of the children of men; yea, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him.
“Yea, and we may see at the very time when he doth prosper his people, yea, in the increase of their fields, their flocks and their herds, and in gold, and in silver, and in all manner of precious things of every kind and art; sparing their lives, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; softening the hearts of their enemies that they should not declare wars against them; yea, and in fine, doing all things for the welfare and happiness of his people; yea, then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One—yea, and this because of their ease, and their exceedingly great prosperity.”
And the prophet goes on to say: “Yea, how quick to be lifted up in pride; yea, how quick to boast, and do all manner of that which is iniquity; and how slow are they to remember the Lord their God, and to give ear unto his counsels, yea, how slow to walk in wisdom’s paths!”
This is applicable to our society today. Never before has man been so temporally blessed as they are in the U.S. right now. Yet God is increasingly being set aside, and man relies on his own knowledge and power. Which isn't as great as we think it is.
Sadly, prosperity is not the only reason people forget God. It can also be hard to remember Him when our lives go badly. When we struggle, as so many do, in grinding poverty or when our enemies prevail against us or when sickness is not healed, the enemy of our souls can send his evil message that there is no God or that if He exists He does not care about us. Then it can be hard for the Holy Ghost to bring to our remembrance the lifetime of blessings the Lord has given us from our infancy and in the midst of our distress.
There is a simple cure for the terrible malady of forgetting God, His blessings, and His messages to us. Jesus Christ promised it to His disciples when He was about to be crucified, resurrected, and then taken away from them to ascend in glory to His Father. They were concerned to know how they would be able to endure when He was no longer with them.
Here is the promise. It was fulfilled for them then. It can be fulfilled for all of us now:
“These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”
The key to the remembering that brings and maintains testimony is receiving the Holy Ghost as a companion. It is the Holy Ghost who helps us see what God has done for us. It is the Holy Ghost who can help those we serve to see what God has done for them.
There have been times in my life when I desperately needed comfort but felt it was not coming; wondering if God no longer loved me or even existed. It took something as simple as honest prayer for the comfort of heaven to be sent. Sometimes it is even instantaneous. If I need help, I have to ask for it.
Heavenly Father has given a simple pattern for us to receive the Holy Ghost not once but continually in the tumult of our daily lives. The pattern is repeated in the sacramental prayer: We promise that we will always remember the Savior. We promise to take His name upon us. We promise to keep His commandments. And we are promised that if we do that, we will have His Spirit to be with us. Those promises work together in a wonderful way to strengthen our testimonies and in time, through the Atonement, to change our natures as we keep our part of the promise.
The gospel is a brilliant scaffolding. It has many pieces and parts, so many that it is hard to comprehend it all. Yet if we take it, piece by piece, and use it then it brings great strength and growth. If we insist on leaving some of it out (i.e. not attending church or not serving others), then the support structure of the gospel is weakened just as a scaffolding is when missing a piece. We can't live the gospel perfectly, but we can try to understand and include as much as we possibly can in our lives.
It is the Holy Ghost who testifies that Jesus Christ is the Beloved Son of a Heavenly Father who loves us and wants us to have eternal life with Him in families. With even the beginning of that testimony, we feel a desire to serve Him and to keep His commandments. When we persist in doing that, we receive the gifts of the Holy Ghost to give us power in our service. We come to see the hand of God more clearly, so clearly that in time we not only remember Him, but we come to love Him and, through the power of the Atonement, become more like Him.
You might ask, “But how does this process get started in someone who knows nothing about God and claims no memory of spiritual experiences at all?” Everyone has had spiritual experiences that they may not have recognized. Every person, upon entering the world, is given the Spirit of Christ. How that spirit works is described in the book of Moroni:
“For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.
“But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him. …
“Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ.”
So, even before people receive the right to the gifts of the Holy Ghost, when they are confirmed as members of the Church, and even before the Holy Ghost confirms truth to them before baptism, they have spiritual experiences. The Spirit of Christ has already, from their childhood, invited them to do good and warned them against evil. They have memories of those experiences even if they have not recognized their source. That memory will come back to them as missionaries or we teach them the word of God and they hear it. They will remember the feeling of joy or sorrow when they are taught the truths of the gospel. This is a beautiful post by my friend Emily that illustrates this point. And that memory of the Spirit of Christ will soften their hearts to allow the Holy Ghost to testify to them. That will lead them to keep commandments and want to take the name of the Savior upon them. And when they do, in the waters of baptism, and as they hear the words in confirmation “Receive the Holy Ghost” spoken by an authorized servant of God, the power to always remember God will be increased.
Every person, devotedly religious or not, has the opportunity to feel the peace offered by the Holy Ghost. If you want to feel it, there is a way.
I testify to you that the warm feelings you have had as you have listened to truth being spoken in this conference are from the Holy Ghost. The Savior, who promised that the Holy Ghost would come, is the beloved, glorified Son of our Heavenly Father.
Tonight, and tomorrow night, you might pray and ponder, asking the questions: Did God send a message that was just for me? Did I see His hand in my life or the lives of my children? I will do that. And then I will find a way to preserve that memory for the day that I, and those that I love, will need to remember how much God loves us and how much we need Him. I testify that He loves us and blesses us, more than most of us have yet recognized. I know that is true, and it brings me joy to remember Him. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Henry B. Eyring, “O Remember, Remember,” Ensign, Nov 2007, 66–69
