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The following is from something that I wrote in a thread on another blog. I want to excerpt this part here for your consideration: Quote:Part of enduring to the end is participating enough to experience the divine amid the overwhelming mundane.
Ray, this is beautiful!! Thanks. Going along with some other threads that talked of relationships within marriage as a metaphor for relationships with the church (or vice versa), I believe this nugget of truth holds true for our family relationships as well as church association.
There are truly ways to find the absolute divine in both, just don’t expect it will be constantly manifest without working for it, many times through the “overwhelming mundane”.
I would even suggest that heaven is no different…although some think Utopia and heaven would be eliminating all the mundane…I tend to think it is more just a place where the group living there can live happily under those conditions because of the people they are. And so families can truly live together forever.
That’s nice. Enduring – not just getting through – but putting a little heart & soul into living. I wonder…what, when or where is “the end”?
I like the part that says “participating enough”… Well put! I don’t like the way a lot of people approach enduring to the end — that life is about suffering, doing things we don’t really deep down enjoy, and that we just have to make it to the finish line … then everything will finally be good. When people express that kind of attitude at Church is one of the rare situations that I almost always chime in to point out that, if they are miserable, they might not being doing things right. I hold my tongue a lot on other things unless specifically moved to say something. This is one topic I feel is controversial but not in a way that threatens. Joy is for the here and now. If we can’t figure out how to have joy now, how do we expect to have it in the eternities?
I like Ray’s approach above though. I like it a lot. Enduring conveys the sense of effort and will it takes to change and see that we are really surrounded by beauty. “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” -Luke 17:21
“In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.” -Gordon B. Hinckley Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. I especially love the quote from Pres. Hinckley. Notice I used the word “mundane” – not “miserable”. There is a HUGE difference between “enduring/enjoying the normal” and “suffering”.
Brian is right, when I was serving my mission, I don’t think I ever had a single good day in 2 years. I looked at the misery I was suffering with some spark of hope to think that there was a certain amount of misery that had to be shoveled out onto the shoulders of the people of this world everyday. And every pound of misery I carried on my shoulders was a pound a brother or sister wouldn’t have to. I was very wrong. Misery is not a celestial chicken feed that God keeps next to the back door of heaven so every morning he can open the door and measure out the misery we need for the day and toss it randomly down to us for our consumption. He never once said that we had to be miserable. He said we must “suffer long” and “endure all things”, but He never said “and be miserable as you take your share of crap that makes up life.” I do remember many words about “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”, and “men are that they might have joy”, and “joy and rejoicing”. I don’t want to grimace my face when I fast, or pray for hours on a street corner with a phylactery on my forehead for everyone to see.
If I could go back and do it all over again, it wouldn’t be about BOLDLY declaring the truth of our message no matter who it pisses off. It wouldn’t be about working hard in the suffering of my tormented soul. It would be about rejoicing with people. My friend served what I like to call the perfect mission. He went about doing good and teaching people about Christ. And his numbers were always the highest in the mission as a result, because he wasn’t about doing his time and working hard. He was about rejoicing with people and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with them. That’s a much better way to be.
Moses 5:10-11 10 And in that day Adam blessed God and was filled, and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.
11 And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.
Nevertheless, life is often a grunt. As my wife sometimes asks: “if man is that he might have joy, why do we have to endure to the end.”
dash, great question from your wife. It really hits at the incorrect assumption that we have to endure to the end in order to experience future joy – rather than enduring “general stuff” AS we experience joy.
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