A Tender Mercy From The Lord

I love it, L.O.V.E. it...when God gives me a tender mercy.  They so often come unexpectedly.  I got one yesterday.  This was after a few days of discouragement in battling after a weakness that I cannot seem to divest myself of!  Does that happen to you?  The same sin/weakness just keeps coming back to haunt you.  Something that you think you surely should have conquered by now--but haven't?  And how does God just go on forgiving us time after time?  I know Satan wants us to get discouraged and give up, thinking we will never measure up.  I also know God wants us to keep trying and never ever give up.

As you know I love Meridian Magazine.  I have received so much aid through their articles.  Yesterday, a tender loving message came in one of their articles.  One I could have easily missed, but God made sure I saw it.  It wasn't even in their regular newsletter, but instead was attached to the end of a long ad.  It is an article by H. Wallace Goddard entitled, "Endure To the End of Garbage."

My tender message was this:

In spite of our most determined efforts to root them out, some thorns in the flesh may last a long time---maybe a lifetime. That failure to conquer may not be a failure at all. Maybe resisting evil, without fully overcoming it, is a part of what enduring to the end is about. 

Many of us who hope for steady improvement in ourselves get discouraged, self-blaming, and despairing as a result of our lack of progress....Yet maybe enduring to the end does not mean that the last vestige of fallenness will be removed in mortality. Maybe it means that we continue to resist evil. If that is true, those who have ever felt discouraged by the tenacious hold of a bad habit or weakness can take hope.

Surely it is true that we should draw on good sense, determination, faith, and priesthood power. But some of us may have thorns in the flesh that persist despite our spiritual exertions. Paul grieved: "For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me." (2 Corinthians 12:8). Yet the trouble persisted. But wise Paul turned it to his spiritual benefit. He transformed his dismay with his own limitations into rejoicing in the Lord's power.

"And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

"Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

But I believe that the God who gives us weakness in order to make us humble (Ether 12:27), may continue to administer His unique humility-medicine for a lifetime. Our persistent weaknesses and failings can be a continuing reminder of our dependence upon God. They can energize our humility.

  

I believe that I may too often take overt behavior as the primary indicator of spiritual progress when the activity of the Spirit may be a surer indicator. Stephen Robinson observes that "if we experience the gifts of the Spirit or the influence of the Holy Ghost, we can know that we are in the covenant relationship, for the gifts and companionship of the Holy Ghost are given to none else" (Robinson, 1992, p. 94).

President David O. McKay observed that "not a few of us have a thorn in the flesh as did Paul. Perhaps to some of us a dead leaf of some past act is clinging. It may be that there is a little dirt in our character, but each one has also a rose in his life, a hawthorn twig, or a lily. And it is a glorious lesson for us to learn: to see the rose and be blind to the thorn; to see the hawthorn twig and he blind to the dead leaf; to see the lily and not the dirt in our fellow's character." (Conference Report, October 1967, p.8).

Down in the dumps

To use a metaphor rather more vulgar than President McKay's, mortality is somewhat like a lifespan at the garbage dump. Disorder and stench are everywhere. We are wise not to believe that the odors are the indicators of character; those foul smells remind us that we inhabit a place where we are all bedeviled by our weakness and burdened by fetid shortcomings. The smell around mortals is not a measure of character but a reminder that this world is not our true Home.  Maybe it is a person's noblest moments, those times when character shines through all that garbage, which gives us the truest measure of character.

Let us not be discouraged by the persistent and bothersome odor of mortality. As Harry Emerson Fosdick reminds us, "What a King stoops to pick up from the mire cannot be a brass farthing, but must be a pearl of great price."

He has stooped down to this mortal garbage dump for you and me. He intends to rescue and cleanse us if we will keep reaching for Him to the end.