(To recap) If the light is the source of everything worthwhile, then
why do we so often stray?
There are two categories of
reasons that come readily to my mind: distractions and doubt. I will talk about
each of them separately, although they do often tend to overlap.
A distraction can be anything
that causes us to take our eyes off of the light that is the Savior of the
world. These things can include: political ideologies that we have a different
opinion on than do the prophets and apostles (or even just our fellow members
at church), deep doctrine that doesn’t make sense to us, church history that we
can’t reconcile with what the scriptures teach us, imperfect Priesthood leaders
whom we don’t understand why they were put in positions of power and authority
. . . I could go on. A lot goes on in the church, and sometimes people use things
they don’t understand – or make no effort to understand – as a reason to leave.
The thing is, though, none of these concerns that I mentioned are the light. They
are merely specks on the horizon. Sometimes as we look towards the light, and especially
as we’re looking from a far-off distance, it’s easy to see these distractions
and hard to tell that they are not included in the light. But the closer we get
to the light the more the light illuminates the things around it, and the
easier it is to see and understand how these different issues fit into the
context of an imperfect world and imperfect people made by a perfect God with a
perfect plan. The important thing to remember is that these specks on the
horizon are nowhere near as big or all-encompassing as the light, and
ultimately they change nothing about the reality of a loving Savior. These
issues do not define the Savior; rather, the light of the Savior helps us
define them through the viewpoint of eternity. Who knows what the horizon that
Sailor headed towards looked like? She could easily have been distracted by the
sound of barking dogs coming from the direction she was headed, or by burnt-out
trees or other ugly scenery on the way to her light – but it wasn’t the scenery
she was headed for. It was the light that gave her hope, and she was not about
to let anything keep her from reaching that source of healing she had chosen to
believe lay at the end of her journey. The moment she reached the light, the
harshness of the horizon faded in significance to the peace that came from
knowing that she had found her source of healing.
The second category of reasons
why we stray from the light is doubts. We doubt that we’ll ever be good enough,
we doubt that Heavenly Father has enough love to forgive us, we doubt that the
harshness of the journey will be worth it, we don’t understand why we’ve been
given such a difficult trial to deal with. We doubt ourselves or we doubt our
Savior (and I think those two doubts are one and the same). We doubt that
peace, joy, love, healing can be ours – and so we don’t even try for it.
But
when we do this, we let spiritual (and sometimes physical) wounds keep us from
our journey to the only one who has the power to heal our wounds. Other sources
can patch us up, make us feel better – but they can’t replace scabs with
perfect skin. Only the Savior can do that – and He does it with spiritual
wounds as well. He replaces despair with hope, confusion with understanding,
fear with faith and love, anger and bitterness with love and forgiveness. He
helps us see us and the world around us the way that He sees them. It’s a higher
perspective, and it is Truth and Beauty defined.
These promised blessings don’t
come fully overnight. The sun comes up over several hours’ time, and the
changing of a soul is an even more powerful miracle than that. It takes
repetition, much like building muscle. It takes day after day after day of
repeating the same basic things over and over and over again, and as we do so
we feel our strength and joy increasing. Sailor had to put one foot in front of
the other over and over and over again and never stop, no matter what. None of
us will ever be completely done with our journey to the light until we are united
with the light completely – and that won’t happen until resurrection and
judgment and our assignment into the kingdom whose glory our own soul best
reflects.
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