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So I am subscribed to the LDS.org daily gems and church history gems. Sometimes, honestly, I get angry at them, most times I’m critical of them (well at least in the recent past), and occasionally I really like them. Let me depart from my usual analytical, and critical ways and post something different. I got this one today
David B. Haight wrote:” ‘I suppose every Mormon [man and] woman [have] measured [themselves] at one time or another against [their pioneer ancestors],’ wrote Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. ‘Am I as stalwart? As self-reliant? As devoted to the gospel? As willing to sacrifice?’ Could I leave my wife and children without food or means to support themselves while I responded to a call to serve a mission abroad, or take these same innocent ones, dependent solely upon me for their survival, into hostile territory to set up housekeeping and provide a livelihood for them? Or, were I a woman, ‘Could I crush my best china to add glitter to a temple, bid loving farewell to a missionary husband as I lay in a wagon bed with fever and chills, leave all that I possessed and walk across the plains to an arid wilderness?’ (Ensign, June 1978, p. 54.)”Some may feel that their lives of relative ease and convenience lack the vigor and fortitude of those who survived the pioneer days, that they can never measure up to the toil, struggles, and challenges our pioneer ancestors faced and emerge the victor.”Yet, ‘Our challenges are just as important as those of the past. Our testing is as crucial; our contributions may be as great. . . .” ‘An essential quality of the first pioneers was optimism, an ability to see new possibilities in a strange and unsettling environment. To beautify the desert, they needed faith in God, but they also needed faith in themselves and in their ability to help shape the world. The need for that faith has not diminished. . . .” ‘A pioneer is not [necessarily] a woman who makes her own soap’ or a man who grubs sagebrush from the land. Pioneers are those who take up their burdens and walk toward the future. With vision and with courage they make the desert blossom and they press on toward new frontiers. (Ibid., p. 55.)”
David B. Haight, “A Call to Serve,” Ensign, Nov. 1988, 82–83
So here’s my question. Are we the new pioneers? Is our trial the one Elder Haight is referring to? Maybe our church leaders don’t even know that we’re the ones who are going to help turn this ship in the right direction, and when we look back on it in 100 years, they will recognize us as pioneers in our day.
What say ye?
jmb275, Are we pioneers? I really don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. I feel I’m being tested to endure, not pioneer. Not to say one is harder than the other, just different.
Can we compare our trials to our ancestors? I don’t think so. Our access to knowledge through the Internet presents a different challenge in our day. Sometimes I wonder if I was called to do some great thing, would I know I just needed to do it because it is not even close to the gray matter that makes things fuzzy as what’s right and wrong.
Remember when Naaman went to Elisha to be healed of leprosy and was offended by being asked to do a simple act in an insignificant body of water? His servant reminded him…
Quote:“My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?
“Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean” (2 Kings 5:13–14).
I hope to be a part of the evolution of our church. If you see yourself as a pioneer, helping to bring the Church into new territory, and helping to build up the Kingdom of God in your own way, I think that is a good life metaphor.
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