Sacrament Talk: The Plan of Happiness
This is a talk I gave in church today about the Plan of Happiness. I was asked to frame it in the context of missionary work because a departing missionary was speaking in the same meeting. He covered the more mechanical aspects of the Plan, and focused his talk on eternal happiness. Mine was focused on happiness in this life, but with an eye to the eternal as well.
Of course, the exact delivery was a slightly different from this, and I'd like to add a disclaimer that I know there are holes here, but I only had one day to prepare as I was covering for someone else, and I had a 15 minute time limit. So it's not perfect, but I'm at peace with it. Here goes.
During his long and taxing journey through the wilderness to a land of promised blessings for his family, the prophet Lehi famously dreamed of a tree “whose fruit was desirable to make one happy” (1 Ne. 8:10).
“And as I partook of the fruit thereof,” he said, “it filled my soul with exceedingly great joy; wherefore, I began to be desirous that my family should partake of it also” (1 Ne. 8:11-12).
This tree, as Lehi’s son Nephi later learned, was a representation of “the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things... and the most joyous to the soul” (1 Ne. 11:22-23). No wonder Lehi wanted to share it.
His desire to bless his family as he had been blessed was the driving motivation of Lehi’s life, and created a powerful legacy, reviving itself over and over throughout the thousand year history of his descendants chronicled in the Book of Mormon.
We could spend the rest of the meeting just giving examples of this, but let’s limit it to one. A few generations later, Enos had a similar response to tasting God’s love. After wrestling in mighty prayer and receiving the joyful knowledge that, through faith in Christ, he had been not just forgiven, but made whole, Enos said, “now, it came to pass that when I had heard these words I began to feel a desire for the welfare of my brethren, the Nephites; wherefore, I did pour out my whole soul unto God for them” (Enos 1:9). Enos succeeded in obtaining a promise that God would deal both justly and mercifully with his people. However, he didn’t stop there.
“And after I, Enos, had heard these words, my faith began to be unshaken in the Lord; and I prayed unto him with many long strugglings for my brethren, the Lamanites” (Enos 1: 11).
Notice the word he uses to describe the people he’s praying for: brethren. At this point in their history, the Lamanites had already demonstrated murderous intent towards the Nephites, yet Enos doesn’t bother drawing lines between friends and enemies. He thinks of them all alike: as brethren.
The same spirit continues for the rest of the book. Whenever one group attempts to bring the other back to the true faith -- and it’s not always the Nephites who are in the right -- the missionaries think of and refer to those they serve as their brethren, which is to say their family, even though they are frequently enemies in a political sense.
And this is not only true for Book of Mormon saints. It is the feeling that has inspired all of the great missionaries of any age or place, and continues to be the best reason to share the Gospel today. The knowledge that we are all literal children of the same heavenly parents is among the most essential truths of our existence, and like all knowledge, includes a price. If we know, or even believe our shared celestial parentage to be true, we are required to act like we know, or believe it.
We do this by seeking to share everything we possess, especially our happiness and the hope of eternal life, with as many of our brothers and sisters as possible. This is the reason we go on missions: we know that God loves us and blesses us, and we want all of God’s children to share that knowledge and those blessings. It has nothing to do with a desire to force our beliefs on others, to dominate their cultures, or to otherwise oppress them. It is simply that, because we have been given much, we too must give. The proper spirit for missionary work will always be a spirit of love. Its goal will always be mutual rejoicing.
After our missions, our ministry doesn’t end, because if we are motivated by familial love, how could it? However, the nature of our daily work changes. We focus on more specialized, individually revealed missions. We try not to miss opportunities to share the joy of the gospel directly, seeking to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh [us] a reason of the hope that is in [us]” (1 Peter 3:15), but most of the time, we simply try to be “an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12).
It’s easy to get caught up in the many commandments, doctrines, and principles related to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, tangling ourselves into intellectual, emotional, or spiritual knots trying to comprehend it all. This struggle to “live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God” (D&C 84:44) is important, but we should also remember the love that drives it, and the happiness that is its purpose.
Think for a moment of how beautiful that is. Our parents’ plan is not to use us as cogs in some obscure celestial machinery. They aren’t conducting an emotionless experiment or leaving us to wander in darkness, seeking for purpose that isn’t there. They just want us to be as happy as possible - as happy as they are - both now and in the hereafter. Everything they have done from the beginning has been for that purpose.
In the time that remains, I’d like to share a few thoughts on happiness, both of the temporal and of the eternal kinds. Many people like to use the words happiness, joy, pleasure, enjoyment, etc. to mean a variety of different things. I think those discussions are valuable, and there are some fine distinctions that matter very much. However, for the sake of simplicity, Today I plan to use the words happiness and joy almost interchangeably, relying on context for any relevant differences. I hope that if I use one where you think I should mean the other, you will simply choose to hear the intended meaning instead.
Let’s start with the here and now. How is God’s Plan of Happiness designed to help us be happy today?
Well, first of all, is it? Are we meant to be happy in this life, or are we meant merely to endure it, walking mournfully before the Lord of Hosts, rejecting everything that smells even a little like the world, and waiting desperately for deliverance? Are we here only to be tried, tested, stretched, squished, prodded, prompted, flagellated, and otherwise chosen in the furnace of affliction? Are we meant to buy into the conventional (and in my opinion, Satanic) wisdom that anything that pleases the senses is necessarily sinful? That pleasures must be guilty, and enthusiasm for temporary things falls below the dignity of a child of God? Do our belief in hard work, our insistence on God’s great superiority to us, and our status as pilgrims and strangers on the earth require that we transform recreation into sloth, humility into shame, and momentary delight into passing frivolity?
Brothers and sisters, it took me an embarrassingly long time to really start to believe that I was allowed to be happy. One of my missionary companions accused me, not completely without reason, of being more interested in “suffering for Jesus” than in preaching. The faith of my youth could sometimes be a hard, punishing thing, centered on strict obedience and a preference for self-inflicted martyrdom. I found joy in the gospel and its promises, but looked with disdain and irritation on the imperfections of mortal life. I was full of judgement, and had little room in my heart for forgiveness, mainly of myself.
You may have noticed that, in asking my questions a moment ago, I blended a wide variety of scriptural statements with common expressions of both gospel doctrine and folk wisdom. This is something we tend to do as a people, and it can be extremely harmful if not done with discernment. We can pick up a sense of God’s plan as a threat against the imperfect rather than as a haven for the tempest-tossed. But always remember that the children of God are meant to be happy, and we are free to choose to follow that intent.
But which children? Who is this happiness for? The faithful? The chosen? Those who can endure to the end?
No. All people. Regardless of race, economic status, identity, behavior, or other factors. It is true that wickedness never was happiness, but it is also true that final judgement is withheld during this, our probationary period of existence. We are bound to make mistakes, and some will be serious, but we are granted a space for repentance. It is during this space that the wilfully wicked seem often to be happy, to have joy in their works for a little season, while those who hunger and thirst after righteousness seem often to be weary and sad.
But appearances can be deceptive, and God does not intend for us to hate this phase of our existence. Think of your own children. When one of them makes a poor choice, do you stop wishing for their happiness, or do you instead desire it more because you can see them on a path that leads away from Lehi’s brilliant, live-giving tree? Does not your love inspire you to reach further toward that child, to stretch your arm out all the day long, rather than to cut them off? When your children suffer, do you not wish to ease that suffering? When they sin, do you not wish to correct that sin - not for the sake of appearances, but for the sake of the blessedness you know they would enjoy if they could just catch the vision of it?
How much more perfect must our Heavenly Parents’ love be? How great their compassion when we hurt, regardless of the cause of our injury? How much more must they long after us when we go astray, and seek our return? How great is the “joy... in heaven over one sinner who repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance?”
This joy is not just for the promise of future felicity it enables, but because when we repent and draw nearer to God, we are happy now! Repentance is a joyful thing, not a fearful punishment.
How could a God who plans so thoroughly for our eternal happiness possibly desire our present misery? By extension, how can we eagerly send our children out to preach the redemption of Christ to the people of all nations, including our own, and then feel superior to those people when we see their suffering? When they starve in dirty streets while we throw a third of our prepared food away, then police the garbage cans so they can’t go through them? How can we think we are following Christ? When we flush our toilets with water far cleaner than what they have to drink? How can we rejoice when those who break laws languish endlessly in prisons, with no chance for forgiveness or rehabilitation? How can we shrug our shoulders and say “well, they got what they deserved?” How do we turn our backs on the members of our own congregations who sit, suffering, among us every week because their lived experiences and inborn feelings contradict the words they hear from the pulpit or in the classroom? Those who struggle to find a home among us who profess to believe a gospel intended for all God’s children. How can we reject them? How can we often figuratively and sometimes literally cast them out from among us, saying with such hypocrisy, that if only they had chosen to be different, they would have had a place here? When we drive our questioning youth to suicide because we can’t bring ourselves to do so much as listen and love instead of sitting in judgment, which is reserved, I remind you, for the Lord? He has given us so much, but judgment, he says, is mine. Of you, it is required to forgive all men, even when they offend you with their race, their smell, their ideas, or their sexuality. Which of us is truly in need of forgiveness?
How can we neglect our elderly, our veterans, our family members who have given so much only to be treated like human excess? Like the waste products of past generations. How can we not weep with shame and compassion when our brothers and sisters die as victims of warfare, poverty, or natural disasters, and when those families who escape that destruction are torn apart and made to suffer greater indignities, sometimes even death, at our very gates, while it lies within our power to aid them? Are not these also the children of God? How can we sleep at night, knowing we would be glad to send them missionaries, but firmly refuse to send them food or shelter, or to speak to them, or even of them with kindness? I am grateful that our God is a merciful God, willing to grant us this space for repentance, because heaven forbid that we should ever get what we deserve.
Truly, as the scripture says, "the world lieth in sin" (D&C 49:20). The hearts of men wax cold, and iniquity abounds (Matthew 24:12). And yet, in the midst of that darkness, God still desires us to be happy.
First of all, look around. Isn’t this world marvelous? Isn’t it beautiful? Aren’t its everyday phenomena inspiring to behold? In the words of Alma, “all things denote that there is a God,” (Alma 30:44) and, at a different time, “cast about your eyes and begin to believe in the Son of God” (Alma 33:22). We worship a God who can make a world that, even though it be fallen, can connect us to eternity, and fill our souls with visions of and longings for the grand celestial worlds to come. Worlds, we are told, without end. As Moroni said, “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” (Moroni 7:16).
Secondly, we have the words of the Savior himself about what he intends for us: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).
“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).
“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you" (John 14:18).
“Lift up your hearts and rejoice” (D&C 27: 15).
We all pass through dark times, and having joy in this life does not mean that we never experience negative emotion. Indeed, the expectation that we must always look and act happy is among the most damaging false traditions we still perpetuate. We too often project an image of things being all right, when they are far from it, in part because we fear judgement. We may think, erroneously, that misfortune is the mark of sin, that God always solves the problems of the righteous, and since we have problems -- even crushing ones -- we must be sinful. We might also read scriptures like the ones I just quoted and think that, because our hearts are troubled, because we feel comfortless or cannot find it in us to rejoice, we are being disobedient, or worse, that we are incapable of right feeling or unworthy of God’s love. To admit this to others is to invite their scorn or rejection. It is to become a burden, when we know our calling is to bear the burdens of others, that they may be light. Yet our own hearts feel so very heavy.
It is at these times that the true Light of the World, of whom we are but dim mirrors, can come to us in unexpected ways.
“He answers privately, reaches my reaching. In my Gethsemane, Savior and friend” (Where Can I Turn For Peace?, Emma Lou Thayne, 1973).
Even if we could exercise perfect faith and obedience, we would still taste the bitter that we might know to prize the sweet. Sadness, sorrow, loss, and pain are all a part of mortal, and perhaps eternal experience. Even the heavens have had cause to weep. But the promise of the Lord is that these things will be but a small moment, and we will have joy.
You see, unlike faith and doubt or love and fear, sorrow and joy are not enemies to each other. It’s true that wickedness never was happiness, but the apparent opposite: righteousness never was sadness, doesn’t hold water. The righteous always sorrow for the sins of the world, and for the suffering of it. Christ himself was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Happiness and sadness can coexist in the same person at the same time, because great sadness is very often an indication of great love.
And yet, someday. “the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away” (Isaiah 51:11).
God’s great plan of redemption, of salvation, of happiness is also a plan for the eternities. Our heavenly parents have in mind for us more than just the enjoyment of this life. They want us to come home. They want us to be like them, which is to say, inconceivably happy. And they want this for all of us. I pray that we will help them make that happen, In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Of course, the exact delivery was a slightly different from this, and I'd like to add a disclaimer that I know there are holes here, but I only had one day to prepare as I was covering for someone else, and I had a 15 minute time limit. So it's not perfect, but I'm at peace with it. Here goes.
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| Christ Healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda by Carl Heinrich Bloch |
“And as I partook of the fruit thereof,” he said, “it filled my soul with exceedingly great joy; wherefore, I began to be desirous that my family should partake of it also” (1 Ne. 8:11-12).
This tree, as Lehi’s son Nephi later learned, was a representation of “the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things... and the most joyous to the soul” (1 Ne. 11:22-23). No wonder Lehi wanted to share it.
His desire to bless his family as he had been blessed was the driving motivation of Lehi’s life, and created a powerful legacy, reviving itself over and over throughout the thousand year history of his descendants chronicled in the Book of Mormon.
We could spend the rest of the meeting just giving examples of this, but let’s limit it to one. A few generations later, Enos had a similar response to tasting God’s love. After wrestling in mighty prayer and receiving the joyful knowledge that, through faith in Christ, he had been not just forgiven, but made whole, Enos said, “now, it came to pass that when I had heard these words I began to feel a desire for the welfare of my brethren, the Nephites; wherefore, I did pour out my whole soul unto God for them” (Enos 1:9). Enos succeeded in obtaining a promise that God would deal both justly and mercifully with his people. However, he didn’t stop there.
“And after I, Enos, had heard these words, my faith began to be unshaken in the Lord; and I prayed unto him with many long strugglings for my brethren, the Lamanites” (Enos 1: 11).
Notice the word he uses to describe the people he’s praying for: brethren. At this point in their history, the Lamanites had already demonstrated murderous intent towards the Nephites, yet Enos doesn’t bother drawing lines between friends and enemies. He thinks of them all alike: as brethren.
The same spirit continues for the rest of the book. Whenever one group attempts to bring the other back to the true faith -- and it’s not always the Nephites who are in the right -- the missionaries think of and refer to those they serve as their brethren, which is to say their family, even though they are frequently enemies in a political sense.
And this is not only true for Book of Mormon saints. It is the feeling that has inspired all of the great missionaries of any age or place, and continues to be the best reason to share the Gospel today. The knowledge that we are all literal children of the same heavenly parents is among the most essential truths of our existence, and like all knowledge, includes a price. If we know, or even believe our shared celestial parentage to be true, we are required to act like we know, or believe it.
We do this by seeking to share everything we possess, especially our happiness and the hope of eternal life, with as many of our brothers and sisters as possible. This is the reason we go on missions: we know that God loves us and blesses us, and we want all of God’s children to share that knowledge and those blessings. It has nothing to do with a desire to force our beliefs on others, to dominate their cultures, or to otherwise oppress them. It is simply that, because we have been given much, we too must give. The proper spirit for missionary work will always be a spirit of love. Its goal will always be mutual rejoicing.
After our missions, our ministry doesn’t end, because if we are motivated by familial love, how could it? However, the nature of our daily work changes. We focus on more specialized, individually revealed missions. We try not to miss opportunities to share the joy of the gospel directly, seeking to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh [us] a reason of the hope that is in [us]” (1 Peter 3:15), but most of the time, we simply try to be “an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12).
It’s easy to get caught up in the many commandments, doctrines, and principles related to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, tangling ourselves into intellectual, emotional, or spiritual knots trying to comprehend it all. This struggle to “live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God” (D&C 84:44) is important, but we should also remember the love that drives it, and the happiness that is its purpose.
Think for a moment of how beautiful that is. Our parents’ plan is not to use us as cogs in some obscure celestial machinery. They aren’t conducting an emotionless experiment or leaving us to wander in darkness, seeking for purpose that isn’t there. They just want us to be as happy as possible - as happy as they are - both now and in the hereafter. Everything they have done from the beginning has been for that purpose.
In the time that remains, I’d like to share a few thoughts on happiness, both of the temporal and of the eternal kinds. Many people like to use the words happiness, joy, pleasure, enjoyment, etc. to mean a variety of different things. I think those discussions are valuable, and there are some fine distinctions that matter very much. However, for the sake of simplicity, Today I plan to use the words happiness and joy almost interchangeably, relying on context for any relevant differences. I hope that if I use one where you think I should mean the other, you will simply choose to hear the intended meaning instead.
Let’s start with the here and now. How is God’s Plan of Happiness designed to help us be happy today?
Well, first of all, is it? Are we meant to be happy in this life, or are we meant merely to endure it, walking mournfully before the Lord of Hosts, rejecting everything that smells even a little like the world, and waiting desperately for deliverance? Are we here only to be tried, tested, stretched, squished, prodded, prompted, flagellated, and otherwise chosen in the furnace of affliction? Are we meant to buy into the conventional (and in my opinion, Satanic) wisdom that anything that pleases the senses is necessarily sinful? That pleasures must be guilty, and enthusiasm for temporary things falls below the dignity of a child of God? Do our belief in hard work, our insistence on God’s great superiority to us, and our status as pilgrims and strangers on the earth require that we transform recreation into sloth, humility into shame, and momentary delight into passing frivolity?
Brothers and sisters, it took me an embarrassingly long time to really start to believe that I was allowed to be happy. One of my missionary companions accused me, not completely without reason, of being more interested in “suffering for Jesus” than in preaching. The faith of my youth could sometimes be a hard, punishing thing, centered on strict obedience and a preference for self-inflicted martyrdom. I found joy in the gospel and its promises, but looked with disdain and irritation on the imperfections of mortal life. I was full of judgement, and had little room in my heart for forgiveness, mainly of myself.
You may have noticed that, in asking my questions a moment ago, I blended a wide variety of scriptural statements with common expressions of both gospel doctrine and folk wisdom. This is something we tend to do as a people, and it can be extremely harmful if not done with discernment. We can pick up a sense of God’s plan as a threat against the imperfect rather than as a haven for the tempest-tossed. But always remember that the children of God are meant to be happy, and we are free to choose to follow that intent.
But which children? Who is this happiness for? The faithful? The chosen? Those who can endure to the end?
No. All people. Regardless of race, economic status, identity, behavior, or other factors. It is true that wickedness never was happiness, but it is also true that final judgement is withheld during this, our probationary period of existence. We are bound to make mistakes, and some will be serious, but we are granted a space for repentance. It is during this space that the wilfully wicked seem often to be happy, to have joy in their works for a little season, while those who hunger and thirst after righteousness seem often to be weary and sad.
But appearances can be deceptive, and God does not intend for us to hate this phase of our existence. Think of your own children. When one of them makes a poor choice, do you stop wishing for their happiness, or do you instead desire it more because you can see them on a path that leads away from Lehi’s brilliant, live-giving tree? Does not your love inspire you to reach further toward that child, to stretch your arm out all the day long, rather than to cut them off? When your children suffer, do you not wish to ease that suffering? When they sin, do you not wish to correct that sin - not for the sake of appearances, but for the sake of the blessedness you know they would enjoy if they could just catch the vision of it?
How much more perfect must our Heavenly Parents’ love be? How great their compassion when we hurt, regardless of the cause of our injury? How much more must they long after us when we go astray, and seek our return? How great is the “joy... in heaven over one sinner who repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance?”
This joy is not just for the promise of future felicity it enables, but because when we repent and draw nearer to God, we are happy now! Repentance is a joyful thing, not a fearful punishment.
How could a God who plans so thoroughly for our eternal happiness possibly desire our present misery? By extension, how can we eagerly send our children out to preach the redemption of Christ to the people of all nations, including our own, and then feel superior to those people when we see their suffering? When they starve in dirty streets while we throw a third of our prepared food away, then police the garbage cans so they can’t go through them? How can we think we are following Christ? When we flush our toilets with water far cleaner than what they have to drink? How can we rejoice when those who break laws languish endlessly in prisons, with no chance for forgiveness or rehabilitation? How can we shrug our shoulders and say “well, they got what they deserved?” How do we turn our backs on the members of our own congregations who sit, suffering, among us every week because their lived experiences and inborn feelings contradict the words they hear from the pulpit or in the classroom? Those who struggle to find a home among us who profess to believe a gospel intended for all God’s children. How can we reject them? How can we often figuratively and sometimes literally cast them out from among us, saying with such hypocrisy, that if only they had chosen to be different, they would have had a place here? When we drive our questioning youth to suicide because we can’t bring ourselves to do so much as listen and love instead of sitting in judgment, which is reserved, I remind you, for the Lord? He has given us so much, but judgment, he says, is mine. Of you, it is required to forgive all men, even when they offend you with their race, their smell, their ideas, or their sexuality. Which of us is truly in need of forgiveness?
How can we neglect our elderly, our veterans, our family members who have given so much only to be treated like human excess? Like the waste products of past generations. How can we not weep with shame and compassion when our brothers and sisters die as victims of warfare, poverty, or natural disasters, and when those families who escape that destruction are torn apart and made to suffer greater indignities, sometimes even death, at our very gates, while it lies within our power to aid them? Are not these also the children of God? How can we sleep at night, knowing we would be glad to send them missionaries, but firmly refuse to send them food or shelter, or to speak to them, or even of them with kindness? I am grateful that our God is a merciful God, willing to grant us this space for repentance, because heaven forbid that we should ever get what we deserve.
Truly, as the scripture says, "the world lieth in sin" (D&C 49:20). The hearts of men wax cold, and iniquity abounds (Matthew 24:12). And yet, in the midst of that darkness, God still desires us to be happy.
First of all, look around. Isn’t this world marvelous? Isn’t it beautiful? Aren’t its everyday phenomena inspiring to behold? In the words of Alma, “all things denote that there is a God,” (Alma 30:44) and, at a different time, “cast about your eyes and begin to believe in the Son of God” (Alma 33:22). We worship a God who can make a world that, even though it be fallen, can connect us to eternity, and fill our souls with visions of and longings for the grand celestial worlds to come. Worlds, we are told, without end. As Moroni said, “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” (Moroni 7:16).
Secondly, we have the words of the Savior himself about what he intends for us: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).
“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).
“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you" (John 14:18).
“Lift up your hearts and rejoice” (D&C 27: 15).
We all pass through dark times, and having joy in this life does not mean that we never experience negative emotion. Indeed, the expectation that we must always look and act happy is among the most damaging false traditions we still perpetuate. We too often project an image of things being all right, when they are far from it, in part because we fear judgement. We may think, erroneously, that misfortune is the mark of sin, that God always solves the problems of the righteous, and since we have problems -- even crushing ones -- we must be sinful. We might also read scriptures like the ones I just quoted and think that, because our hearts are troubled, because we feel comfortless or cannot find it in us to rejoice, we are being disobedient, or worse, that we are incapable of right feeling or unworthy of God’s love. To admit this to others is to invite their scorn or rejection. It is to become a burden, when we know our calling is to bear the burdens of others, that they may be light. Yet our own hearts feel so very heavy.
It is at these times that the true Light of the World, of whom we are but dim mirrors, can come to us in unexpected ways.
“He answers privately, reaches my reaching. In my Gethsemane, Savior and friend” (Where Can I Turn For Peace?, Emma Lou Thayne, 1973).
Even if we could exercise perfect faith and obedience, we would still taste the bitter that we might know to prize the sweet. Sadness, sorrow, loss, and pain are all a part of mortal, and perhaps eternal experience. Even the heavens have had cause to weep. But the promise of the Lord is that these things will be but a small moment, and we will have joy.
You see, unlike faith and doubt or love and fear, sorrow and joy are not enemies to each other. It’s true that wickedness never was happiness, but the apparent opposite: righteousness never was sadness, doesn’t hold water. The righteous always sorrow for the sins of the world, and for the suffering of it. Christ himself was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Happiness and sadness can coexist in the same person at the same time, because great sadness is very often an indication of great love.
And yet, someday. “the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away” (Isaiah 51:11).
God’s great plan of redemption, of salvation, of happiness is also a plan for the eternities. Our heavenly parents have in mind for us more than just the enjoyment of this life. They want us to come home. They want us to be like them, which is to say, inconceivably happy. And they want this for all of us. I pray that we will help them make that happen, In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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