2 Chronicles 7:14

In large crowds of sporting spectators one may often see someone displaying a sign that says, ‘John 3:16.’  It is a good scripture that tells a powerful truth, but like most scriptures or ‘instruction books’ of any kind a single sentence does not tell the whole story.  Yes, God loves His children but He shows that love by blessing them when they do right.  Notwithstanding the many who think that love is unconditional, with no expectations on the recipients, they clearly do not know the character of God or have not read their scriptures (all of them) carefully.

 

The same God who gave us His gospel and his Law and His Son gave us the scripture found in 2 Chronicles 7:14:

            “If my people who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 

I think you’ll find a few conditions there and you will also find a promised outcome that we could surely use, right now, in our troubled land. 

To me it is interesting that the mother of the 34^th president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower had her son open the Bible to this scripture when he placed his hand upon it to take his presidential oath of office. 
 

Although Dwight Eisenhower was not religious in his adult life, he internalized most of the principles learned from his cheerful and devout Christian mother and conversely more dour and less, for him, influential father.  But both parents inculcated in Dwight an understanding for the need of self-discipline and the habit of steadiness of character over time.  “I simply gave myself an order,” he once said, to always “reflect the cheerful certainty of victory.” To that end Eisenhower  knew that duty, obedience, and humility were key virtues and linked not only to temporal success but also to eternal values. He was, in David Brook’s words, “fueled by passion and policed by self-control.

   

In consideration of 2 Chronicles 7:14,  I think that few Americans, and very few of our younger Generation know of or believe in this verse of scripture or of many others like it that can be found in Holy writ.  Neither do they know that the foundation of this nation and the character of many its finest leaders were based on a covenant with God that blessings of national prosperity would be conditioned upon our faithfulness. 

 

A retrenchment and rapprochement may still be possible, but most of the sand has drained from the top-half of our national hour-glass.  Pray that God will turn the glass on its side as we try to regain His favor. 

Suffering

It is only natural to do all we can to avoid things that cause us to suffer, or to mitigate it when suffering is unavoidable.  Yet when it is unavoidable it can (usually in retrospect) be viewed as a great turning point in a life that had been, by contrast, shallow or inconsequential.  Suffering can be transformational. 

 

In my faith the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., while incarcerated for months in a cold and cramped jail on trumped-up charges, received this revelation (quoted in part):

            “If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea…if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers … [or] into the deep (water) … know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.  The Son of Man (Jesus the Christ) hath descended below them all.  Art thou greater than He?”  (Doctrine and Covenants 122: 5-8)

Bestselling author David Brooks in his 2015, The Road to Character, writes: 

            “Most people shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering. / People we call deep have almost always endured a season of suffering, or several such seasons. / For most of us, there is nothing intrinsically noble about suffering … suffering is sometimes just destructive. / When it is not connected to some larger purpose beyond itself, suffering shrinks or annihilates people.  When it is not understood as a piece of a larger process, it leads to doubt, nihilism, and despair. / But some people can connect their suffering to some greater design. / It is not the suffering itself that makes all the difference, but the way it is experienced.” 

Mr. Brooks cited Abraham Lincoln as one who suffered through his psychological depression and the pain of conducting a civil war but “who emerged with the sense that Providence had taken control of his life, that he was a small instrument in a transcendent task.”  Many people, say Brooks, “don’t come out healed; they come out different. 

Orson Whitney has written,

            “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted.  It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude, and humility.  All that we suffer, all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our character, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, makes us more tender and charitable, … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation that we came here to acquire which will make us more like our Father…in Heaven.”

 

Every parent knows that suffering can be not only physical (as a birthing mother knows as she goes, sometimes, down into the valley of the shadow of death to bring forth new life) but also vicarious as they see their (physically) grown children make bad choice after bad choice that leads to their childrens’ sufferings.

But it can be for us, depending on how we view it and use it, as author Sheldon Vanauken (and C. S. Lewis) said, ‘A Severe Mercy’ because it enables growth of character that could come in no other way.

Preaching to the Choir

It occurs to me that anyone who would read these missives (or continue after reading their first couple of offerings) would be pretty decent human beings in their own right and not need these preachments.  But then I thought that if this were the case, it might still be nice to be reinforced or validated in their own positions.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my observations on life and living, or even those I quote, are all “pools of living water” in the “parched ground and barren deserts” of our social environment.  But sometimes they are a small draught of refreshment.

Yet I would say that all I have written I stoutly believe or that I personally have experienced to my betterment the application of the true principles about which I have written .

Among the observations that come to mind today are these:

·        Find your ‘giants’ –great role models—even among the elderly and common acquaintances and learn from them.  

·        Read from among the ‘best books’ and look for learning.

·        Keep the long view always before you. 

·        Don’t let your life get caught up or bogged down in ‘the thick of thin things.’  Examine yourself every day to see how you are doing.

·        Try somehow, some way, every day to make someone else’s life better or brighter. 

·        Be grateful and express it in prayer, in person, on paper.