Christ can repair broken relationships with God, broken relationships with others, and broken parts of ourselves.
Waiting upon the Lord can be a sacred place where we come to know Him deeply.
When we submit to the will of the Lord, we will ultimately receive substantially more than that which we had desired.
Often the scriptures give only a small portion of someone’s life, and based on that portion, we sometimes tend to exalt or condemn. No one’s life can be understood by one magnificent moment or one regrettable public disappointment. The purpose of these scriptural accounts is to help us see that Jesus Christ was the answer then, and He is the answer now. He knows our complete story and exactly what we suffer, as well as our capabilities and vulnerabilities.
We practice that same pattern with people currently judging, either to exalt or condemn, based on some small bit that we focus on.
Because of Christ, our decision to “go forth and change” can also allow us to “go forth and heal,” for He is the source of healing all that is broken in our lives. As the great Mediator and Advocate with the Father, Christ sanctifies and restores broken relationships—most important, our relationship with God.
The Joseph Smith Translation makes it clear that the woman {caught in adultery} did follow the Savior’s counsel and changed her life: “And the woman glorified God from that hour, and believed on his name.” It is unfortunate that we do not know her name or other details about her life after this moment because it would have required great determination, humility, and faith in Jesus Christ for her to repent and change. What we do know is she was a woman who “believed on his name” with the understanding that she was not beyond the reach of His infinite and eternal sacrifice.
We should be more careful of what parts we focus on relative to people. What we focus on should be driven by what is relevant to our responsibility, not what we wish to see and believe about them.
Each person needs to be able to see themselves as needing AND being within the reach of the infinite and eternal sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
In Luke chapter 15 we read a parable of a man who had two sons. The younger son asked his father for his inheritance, took his journey into a far country, and wasted his substance with riotous living.
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“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
The fact that the father ran to his son, I believe, is significant. The personal hurt that the son had inflicted upon his father was surely deep and profound. Likewise, the father may have been genuinely embarrassed by his son’s actions.
So why didn’t the father wait for his son to apologize? Why didn’t he hold out for an offering of restitution and reconciliation before extending forgiveness and love? This is something I have often pondered.
We should never make doing what is right ourselves conditional on someone else doing what is right—that is a rejection of our own agency.
With the depiction of this father in the parable of the prodigal son, the Savior emphasized that forgiveness is one of the noblest gifts we can give one another and most specifically ourselves. Unburdening our hearts through forgiveness isn’t always easy, but through the enabling power of Jesus Christ, it is possible.
Oftentimes we can find ourselves, like the lame beggar at the gate of the temple, patiently—or sometimes impatiently—“wait[ing] upon the Lord.” Waiting to be healed physically or emotionally. Waiting for answers that penetrate the deepest part of our hearts. Waiting for a miracle.
Waiting upon the Lord can be a sacred place—a place of polishing and refining where we can come to know the Savior in a deeply personal way. Waiting upon the Lord may also be a place where we find ourselves asking, “O God, where art thou?”—a place where spiritual perseverance requires us to exercise faith in Christ by intentionally choosing Him again and again and again. I know this place, and I understand this type of waiting.
I spent countless hours at a cancer treatment facility, united in my suffering with many who were yearning to be healed. Some lived; others did not. I learned in a profound way that deliverance from our trials is different for each of us, and therefore our focus should be less about the way in which we are delivered and more about the Deliverer Himself. Our emphasis should always be on Jesus Christ!
When we think of polishing we can imagine a soft cloth buffing up a surface that is already smooth but polishing can also include much rougher treatment. Likewise, we may expect that polishing will always result in a visible improvement but sometimes the polishing process makes refining changes that are too fine to be noticed with the naked eye.
We all have something in our lives that is broken that needs to be mended, fixed, or healed. As we turn to the Savior, as we align our hearts and minds with Him, as we repent, He comes to us “with healing in his wings,” puts His arms lovingly around us, and says, “It’s OK…We can fix this together!”
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