I was reminded of that again this morning, while studying for my next lesson, I found this talk by Elder Jeffery R. Holland and wanted to remember this tender story--which I had heard before, but how easily we forget. We need to be reminded every day of our dependance on Him.
Just like the lesson I taught yesterday, about how the Lord rained bread from heaven, which the children of Israel called Manna...and they had to work to gather it everyday, except the Sabbath, cause it wouldn't keep for longer than what they could eat at the moment. We need the temporal sustenance of 'bread and water' each day in order to live, and we need the bread and water that the Savior represents to live eternally. He is the only source of that which if we eat and drink--day by day--we will never hunger or thirst.
Elder Holland
My witness this morning is that he will deliver all the rest of us, too, that he will deliver the entire human family, if we will but “take care of sacred things,” if we will “look to God and live.”
The
greatest affirmation of that promise ever given in this world was the
gift of God’s perfect and precious Firstborn Son, a gift given not in
condemnation of the world, but to soothe and save and make the world
secure: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16; emphasis added).
Katie
Lewis is my neighbor. Her father, Randy, is my bishop; her mother,
Melanie, is a saint. And her older brother, Jimmie, is battling
leukemia.
Sister
Lewis recently recounted for me the unspeakable fear and grief that
came to their family when Jimmie’s illness was diagnosed. She spoke of
the tears and the waves of sorrow that any mother would experience with a
prognosis as grim as Jimmie’s was. But like the faithful Latter-day
Saints they are, the Lewises turned to God with urgency and with faith
and with hope. They fasted and prayed, prayed and fasted. And they went
again and again to the temple.
One
day Sister Lewis came home from a temple session weary and worried,
feeling the impact of so many days—and nights—of fear being held at bay
only by monumental faith.
As
she entered her home, four-year-old Katie ran up to her with love in
her eyes and a crumpled sheaf of papers in her hand. Holding the papers
out to her mother, she said enthusiastically, “Mommy, do you know what
these are?”
Sister
Lewis said frankly her first impulse was to deflect Katie’s zeal and
say she didn’t feel like playing just then. But she thought of her
children—all her children—and the possible regret of missed
opportunities and little lives that pass too swiftly. So she smiled
through her sorrow and said, “No, Katie. I don’t know what they are.
Please tell me.”
“They are the scriptures,” Katie beamed back, “and do you know what they say?”
Sister
Lewis stopped smiling, gazed deeply at this little child, knelt down to
her level, and said, “Tell me, Katie. What do the scriptures say?”
“They say, ‘Trust Jesus.’” And then she was gone.
Sister
Lewis said that as she stood back up, holding a fistful of her
four-year-old’s scribbling, she felt near-tangible arms of peace
encircle her weary soul and a divine stillness calm her troubled heart.
Katie
Lewis, “angel and minister of grace,” I’m with you. In a world of some
discouragement, sorrow, and overmuch sin, in times when fear and despair
seem to prevail, when humanity is feverish with no worldly physicians
in sight, I too say, “Trust Jesus.” Let him still the tempest and ride
upon the storm. Believe that he can lift mankind from its bed of
affliction, in time and in eternity.
Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved!
And we must love him too,
And trust in his redeeming blood,
And try his works to do.
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