Form Chieko N. Okazaki and her book “Being Enough”:
Someone once commented, “We do not remember days, we remember moments.”2 How true this is! And because we are human beings—eternal beings spending some time in mortality where, by definition, we have a very short attention spans—I think the best way to concentrate on the things of eternity is to treat each moment as if it contained eternity. Maybe your heart sinks at the idea of being cheerful while undertaking a boring task for a whole morning. That’s alright. Try being cheerful for a moment. Maybe you can’t promise to be patient for the entire year your child is two. That’s alright. You can be patient for a moment, and then for another moment, and then maybe for the moment in-between that links the other two moments.
There’s a Japanese proverb, . . . “Enough holes will make a mountain fall down.” There may be particular moments and particular gifts in which you are called to move a mountain with a gigantic earth mover, all yellow and roaring and dramatic. But the faith that moves mountains is equally willing to work with a pick and shovel.
So try being an ant hole. Try remembering that you only have to rise to the occasion for a moment, don’t be hard on yourself for not suddenly being able to stop being human. Jesus came to us in our humanness. He didn’t demand that we perfect ourselves and then be present for inspection before he would deign to notice us. Henry Ward Beecher said, “Find the thing meant for you to do and then do the best you can. You must be faithful to the place where God put you and for which you are equipped.”3 There is much in our society that tells us that “duty” and “responsibility” are not very glamorous. No, frequently they’re not. They’re something better. They’re glorious!
When I was a little girl, my mother taught me how to make a cake. We didn’t have an oven. We had a shiny square tin box that we put over our little kerosene fire. It settled over and trapped the heat within it, but you didn’t have anyway to judge the temperature inside except by experience and by regulating the heat very carefully. It was pretty tricky, but I worked hard and thought I had learned how to do it. The first time I made a cake completely on my own, without my mother’s supervision, I was about eight years old, and the cake was pretty experimental. I didn’t know how it adjust the fire, and the cake burned on the bottom. And it didn’t just scorch a little. About one fourth of that cake was completely black.
I was so disappointed and ashamed that I had made such a serious mistake. “Oh,” I wailed to my father, I was supposed to make this cake for your supper.” My dad took my feelings seriously, even if he didn’t take the cake very seriously. He said, “That’s okay. I’ll show you how to fix it.” He took out the bread knife and cut off the bottom and said, “We’ll throw this part away, and look! What we have left is a very fine cake.”
My parents raised us children with kindness and acceptance. There was no scolding, no judging, I never heard them complain about or judge other people, even when my mother received tremendous pressure from my father’s mother. And perhaps you know how much power the mother-in-law has in oriental society. My mother’s sister-in-law was also very harsh to my mother, but she looked beyond the stress of the moment and turned those disappointing moments into peaceful, happy moments, by letting the feelings go past her. In the same way, my father turned my disappointing moment with the cake into a happy moment for both of us.
Can you do the same with the children in your lives? And also do the same with the individuals with whom you must work? I am asking you to be consistent in building high-quality moments into your relationships with your children and into relationships with your colleagues because both of these relationships tend to get focused easily on the job at hand, on the task, on the work, and on the sheer maintenance aspects. But you will know other areas in your life where such attentiveness is appropriate.
The scriptures refer to this quality in a couple of different ways. On one occasion, when Jesus fed the four thousand with seven loaves and “a few fishes,” he expressed his concern for the people by calling together his disciples and saying, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they continued with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting. lest that faint in the way: (Matthew 15:32; emphasis added). Maybe we’ve wondered what it would have been like to be in the presence of Jesus during one of his great miracles, like the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I’m sure it was a wonderful moment. But I wonder what it would have been like to have “continued with” Jesus for three days after that. I’m sure there were many wonderful moments, but continuing with means those wonderful moments were interspersed with fatigue and discomfort from sleeping on the ground, and physical huger to the point that Jesus knew they would faint if they started back to their homes without food.
Our commitment to Christ requires us to continue with him. There won’t be miracles of loaves and fishes every day, but there will be miracles for those who “continue with” during the days of teaching and searching for understanding. I wonder if this is the feeling that the Psalmist wanted to communicate when he prayed tot he Lord, “O continue thy loving kindness unto them that know thee; and thy righteous to the upright in heart” (Psalm 36:10; emphasis added).
As a third area, I also ask you to be consistent in your relationship with the Lord. Sir William Osler once commented, “Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith—the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in a crucible.”4 ~~Chieko N. Okazaki, “Being Enough” (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2002), p.22-26
President Gordon B. Hinckley told a very touching story about a navel officer he met from a distant nation. The young man was brilliant and had been brought to the United States for some advanced training, where he came in contact with the Latter-day Saint men who shared with him the message of the Restoration. Though he had previously not been a Christian, he embraced the gospel and was baptized.
When this young man was introduced to President Hinckley, the prophet said to him, “Your people are not Christians. What will happen when you return home a Christian, and, more particularly, a Mormon Christian?” The man’s face clouded , and he replied, “My family will be disappointed. They may cast me out and regard me as dead. As for my career, all opportunities may be foreclosed against me. “.
President Hinckley then asked, “Are you willing to pay so great a price for the gospel?”
“His dark eyes, moistened by tears shone in his handsome brown face as he answered, ‘It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Ashamed at having asked the question, President Hinckley responded, ‘Yes, it’s true.’ To which he replied, ‘Then what else matters?'”5
~~Chieko N. Okazaki, Being Enough (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft: 2002) p. 22-26
