Just As James Promised.

When Christ was on the earth He did a lot of things we should be taking note of.  In truth, His life is the very example we should be patterning our own after in every way.  One of the things He did was set up His church, complete with the priesthood and a quorum of apostles and the whole she-bang.

When Christ left the earth, He left the church established in His apostles.  But the world wasn't quite ready for what they had to say.  One by one they were killed off form the earth, taking the priesthood authority with them.

But the Old Testament was still around, and the writings and teachings of Peter and Paul and all the other apostles where still circulating and eventually they were compiled into what we now know as the Holy Bible.  And men interpreted it the best they could, and some just flat out changed the meanings to fit how they wanted it to.

Different churches arose for various reasons but the priesthood and the truths of the gospel were lost and muddied.

Enter Joseph Smith Jr.

As a 14 year old boy, listening to the great preachings of so many churches and wondering at them as so many do, even today, he felt directionless and confused and was asking questions but not finding any real answers.  Or, perhaps, finding answers but how can every church be true, as they claim, when they're all different?

One night as he was looking in the Bible he found the verse, James 1:5, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."

He did just that saying, "At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to 'ask of God,' concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture." (JSH 1:13)

One day he ventured out into the woods to find a solitary place.  "After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

"But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

 "It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" (JSH 1:15-17)

Christ created the world, under the direction of His Father.  And under the direction of our Father in Heaven, he created all things that are on the earth.  (Moses 2:1).  No unclean thing can be in the presence of God the Father.  It's through His son, Jesus Christ, that we can become clean again.  In, or through, Christ's name we pray to the Father.  And through Christ we receive direction and blessings. Christ is our intermediary.

He is our Savior.  Through Christ we can return to our Father in Heaven.  He made this possible for us.  And in return for that, He simply asks that we live His gospel. "...He has appointed the law of the gospel as the medium which must be complied with in this world or the next, as He complied with His Father's law... Hence being the mediator between God and man, He becomes by right the dictator and director on earth and in heaven for the living and for the dead, for the past, the present, and the future..." (John Taylor, Mediation and Atonement, p. 171).

Joseph Smith Jr. received a clear answer that day.  None of the churches were the true church of Christ.  But through Joseph Smith Jr., the true church was again established on this earth.  Like the apostles of old Joseph Smith learned a lot of things from Christ in a very short amount of time.  And like the apostles of old, he eventually gave his life as a sealing testimony.

In Jeffrey R. Holland's book, Broken Things To Mend, he gives a talk where he speaks of all the dispensations of time, and through all the efforts by righteous prophets to establish the gospel on the earth, it never fully took.  Prophets were killed.  Teachings were rejected.  Apostasy ensued.

Until today.

Elder Holland points out that in all of those times, those prophets who taught with their lives weren't doing it for their time.  They weren't doing it for their people at that moment.

They were doing it for us.  They were doing it for our time.  Our time, the last dispensation when the fullness of the gospel would be restored and not only stick, but spread throughout the entire world. We are the fruits of their labor.  We are who they have taught.

I hope that we can take to heart the words of President Uchtdorf, "please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith." (here)  If there are questions or things that don't make sense, it's simply that we need to do as Joseph Smith did.  Study.  Pray.  I have learned in my life that when I don't understand something, the problem has been with me, and I've simply needed to learn more about it.  Always, the answers, the wisdom, comes.  Just as James promised it would.

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I Never Pick Up Hitch Hikers. Except That One Time.

It was a dark and stormy night, miles from the nearest town.  The two lane road curved through the mountainside, cliff rising up on one side, steep mountainside on the other. The temperature had dropped to freezing and the rain was falling in cold sheets.

I was cruising along, my iPod cranking out my favorite music and my heated seat keeping me toasty as I drove to meet my ex husband and get my girls back from their weekend with him.  After years of making this very drive, every other weekend, I knew the curves of the road like the back of my hand and I flowed with the road easily, despite the weather.

I turned a bend and saw a minivan pulled off to the side of the road with the flashers going.  With my new "don't just think, do" attitude (middle of this post) I contemplated that minivan, but then came to the conclusion that in this particular incident there wasn't a thing I could do.  So I continued on my way.

I turned another bend when my headlights caught a figure walking down the side of the road, shoulders hunched to protect himself from the cold rain, thumb out.  He wore only jeans and a white sweatshirt.

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I flew by him, but that feeling was already settling into my gut.

That, "you know what you need to do" feeling.

"Gah!" I exclaimed as I hit the steering wheel.

"I don't pick up hitch hikers!  It's not safe.  I'm alone.  I have no cell service."  Because I talk to myself like that when no one else is around.

In my mind the answers to those statements gnawed at me.

His car broke down.  He has no cell service.  It's literally freezing cold.  He isn't remotely close to anywhere.  You can just take him two miles to where you're meeting your ex.

And I felt calm.

God works that way.

So I flipped around, and went back.

And flipped around again and pulled up beside him.

He was cold and shivering and grateful.  "My family is waiting for me in the car.  It's new and has a flat tire, I didn't realize it didn't have what's needed to change a tire.  I need to call for help."

"I can take you up here a couple of miles to where I'm stopping.  Maybe my ex can help you from there."

"Current Creek?"

"Yes.  But you know they tore that down?"

"Yeah."

"Sometimes I get spotty cell reception when I'm there.  Maybe you can get a call out."

By then we were there.  He noted he had one bar on his phone and maybe he could get a call out.

He walked a little to the side and I explained to my ex what was going on as we switched kids and bags from one car to the next.  And then we both waited for him to get off the phone.

He turned around and said he'd gotten through to someone and they were coming, though they were an hour and a half away.  That was really no surprise since we really were in the middle of nowhere.

I told him I could take him back to his car and his family.  Or I could even drive him to Heber where he could wait somewhere warm with his family until his friend could show up.  Unfortunately Heber was the wrong direction for his friend to be coming so he'd have to wait in the car.

So I drove him back and wished him well, and continued on my way back home.

And gave my girls a stern lecture about how we never pick up hitch hikers.

But how many times has that been me stranded on the side of the road?  Even on that very drive, and every time someone has stopped and helped me.  The hitch hiker said it well to me, "isn't it always in a situation as this that things happen?"

I think about society and how it makes us scared to reach out and help each other.  Because you never do know who that stranded person is.

But how grateful I am for the spirit of God that whispers to kind people when I find myself in need, find I'm the stranger on the side of the road.  And how always, I've had help.

And how grateful I am that I can hear the whispers myself.  And be there to help.  God hears our prayers.  And usually the answer comes through someone else.

May this Christmas season be spent in the service of our fellow beings. May we know in whom we can trust.  We are not alone, He is always mindful of us.