Continuing from a previous post: Patricia T. Holland wrote: We were fasting and we were praying. We were living the gospel as well as we knew how. We were praying hard to be whatever it was God wanted us to be, and we were believers. At the close of that day of fasting and as we prayed earnestly over what seemed to us a very serious matter, I think I have never seen any human being so radiant in my whole life. Jeff truly radiated “a brightness of hope” and was filled with “unspeakable joy.” Even now the image of his countenance is still fresh in my mind. His whole being seemed to glow. The only words I remember him speaking at that moment, “It’s going to be okay. And it was. And it is. And it will always be.
That’s a pretty ordinary story taken from our pretty ordinary student days. It is intended to remind us that the Lord “giveth power to the faint; and to them that hath no might he increaseth strength.” With strength we can “mount up with wings of eagles,” into the arms of the “God of all comfort” who smiles at our childish fears and understands every recurring doubt. He is our Father and he does hear our prayers. And whenever we go to him earnestly seeking his spirit — a privilege unlimited by time or place or circumstance — we will be filled with light and we will be lightened of our load. It is a gift from God.
George Mac Donald wrote: ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty; no veil, free sight; clear, radiant insight and perception. Where the Spirit of the Lord is not, there is slavery at all times, dullness, and darkness, and stupidity.” (Getting to Know Jesus [New York: Ballantine, 1987], p. 5.)
To be honest, I’m not interested in any more dullness, darkness and stupidity” than I really feel. Why then don’t we have the Spirit of the Lord with us more often than we do? Actually, nothing dominated my thoughts when I was younger quite so much as why, when I had so much faith and had at times been able to move a veritable mountain (or at least to keep from burning one up!), did I continue to have fears, or to feel dull, dark and stupidity,” as George MacDonald would say. That was always a great and disturbing mystery to me when I was in school, and I thought about it for a long, long time.
As I now look back at it with many more years of experience and perspective, I have wondered if perhaps many of those self-doubts and insecurities come because we actually fear the God of the Old Testament — full of wrath and anger and vengeance? Do we continue to act or perform our duties because we fear his judgment and punishment? Or do we act out of love for him with absolute knowledge, nothing doubting, that he truly loves us? He is “the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort.” I now believe that. I want all of us to believe it.
I sheepishly admit there have been many times in my life when I assumed that God’s love for me was conditional, that I somehow had to be absolutely perfect to receive it, that some childish thing I had done or thought or said would surely keep me from being worthy of his love. Sometimes I have felt as though my ability to ask for God’s help and deliverance depended totally on my own righteousness. I expect that many people have felt that way.
It has been comforting to me to realize that over many years I have been given an unfathomable number of blessings. I have been helped and rewarded beyond my deepest dreams or highest hopes — and all in spite of those imperfections I knew I had and worried about so much. Imperfect, inadequate, unconfident Pat Holland has received all those answers to prayers and all those myriad of blessings. If imperfection can bring such comforts, what must lie ahead of us as we truly are at he business of living of life perfectly? ~~~Sister Patricia T. Holland (deceased) “On Earth as it is in Heaven” p.42-43 (continued)
