With canning season in full swing I am
reminded of the end of canning season last fall. Everything had been put away with feelings of
a fruitful season completed. I felt
really good about the work that I had done to prepare my food storage for the
coming winter months. I had the kitchen
cleaned and the food neatly stacked on shelves where they looked tempting to
the hungry belly. However, as with most
projects, not everything made it to the storage areas. There were a couple of empty jars that had remained
on the counter and hadn't quite made to the shelves in preparation for the next
year. Noticing this, my young children
latched onto the example that was given them by me. They proceeded to "can" what was
important to them. The result was
"canned" hot wheels.
This really got me pondering about what
I consider important. Amongst all the
hundred bottles of fruit and jam that were sitting prettily on my shelves at
the end of the season, did I "can" the things that were truly
important to me? This started to make me
ponder what is important in my life. My
family, friends, the gospel, the scriptures, but most important, my faith that
all things are done in the Lord's time and that things have a way of working
out for my benefit as long as I put my faith
in Him. So, this leads me to ask, what
is important to add to our Spiritual "food storage"?
One very important item we must all
focus on is storing up our Faith. Even
if we don't feel we have a strong faith now, we can be at peace knowing that we
don't need to know all the answers now to have faith. Even the great humanitarian Mother Teresa
expressed her concerns about the strength of her faith in a letter written to
her superior:
“Please pray specially for me that I may not
spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself—for there is such terrible
darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or
less from the time I started ‘the work.’ Ask Our Lord to give me courage.”
Archbishop Périer responded: “God guides
you, dear Mother; you are not so much in the dark as you think. The path to be
followed may not always be clear at once. Pray for light; do not decide too
quickly, listen to what others have to say, consider their reasons. You will
always find something to help you. … Guided by faith, by prayer, and by reason
with a right intention, you have enough.”
In Mosiah we are instructed to "Believe
in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things … ; believe that he
has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man
doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend."
So, what is faith? This is an age old question that has a
beautiful answer. Elder Neil L. Andersen tells us that "faith in Jesus Christ is
a gift from heaven that comes as we choose to believe and as we seek it and
hold on to it." In Alma
32 we learn that faith is compared to a small seed. Faith usually begins as a small thing.
Sometimes it begins with only the desire to believe. Like the seed, it has within
it the ability to grow in strength and power. To grow, it needs to be planted
and taken care of. 
The seed of faith is planted in our
hearts. As we take care of it and it begins to grow, our faith fills our lives
with blessings, and we find miracles happening in our lives. These may not be
miracles like the moving of a mountain, but we will notice changes taking place
in ourselves and those around us that we thought would never happen. We will
feel the blessings of Heavenly Father in our lives and have reason to rejoice.
We will have the confidence and strength to hold on to the iron rod until we
reach eternal life.
I have witnessed miracles in my own
personal family when I have had faith.
As many of you know, we have three beautiful children. These children are 18, 6 & 4. We did
not plan for the large spacing between our 1st and 2nd children. We often joke about how we really wanted to
ensure that we had a babysitter before we had more children. We even went so far as to say we were
"saving up" so we could afford to have more children. These excuses were of course false.
We tried desperately for years to have
more children when our oldest was younger.
I had several sessions on my knees in earnest prayer in which I plead
with Heavenly Father to bless our family to grow. After several years of pleading, I was given
the sweet answer to my prayer. It was
not in the form of another child, but in the sweet peace that Heavenly Father
had already given me one beautiful child and that I needed to be thankful for
the blessing that He had already given me.
It was from that point on that I was
determined to enjoy every minute I could with my daughter. I rejoiced in the blessing that I had been
given and I had faith that Heavenly Father would see fit to complete our family
in His time.
My mother-in-law had other concerns
about our lack of children and said that we needed to do more medically to
improve our chances of having more children.
I remember clearly the day that I had the faith enough to tell her that
if the Lord saw fit to give us more children, medicine would not be
involved. It wasn't too long after the conviction
of my faith that I found I was indeed expecting our son.
This leads us to ponder, how can we help
our faith in Christ grow? One way is to pray
to Heavenly Father and ask him to help our faith to grow.
Elder Anderson explains that "faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ is not something ethereal, floating loosely in the air. Faith does not
fall upon us by chance or stay with us by birthright. It is, as the scriptures
say, “substance …, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith emits a spiritual
light, and that light is discernible. Faith
in Jesus Christ is a gift from heaven that comes as we choose to believe and as
we seek it and hold on to it. Your faith is either growing stronger or becoming
weaker. Faith is a principle of power, important not only in this life but also
in our progression beyond the veil. By
the grace of Christ, we will one day be saved through faith on His name. The future of your faith is not by chance,
but by choice."
There may be a time when you have
drifted so far off the correct path that you may not feel worthy of the
Savior's love or guidance. You may feel
that you don't deserve the grace that he so desperately wants to give you. You may feel that no matter how hard you try,
you will never gain the love of our Heavenly Father again. I'm here to add my testimony to that of
President J. Reuben Clark when he stated in 1939:
“It is my hope and my belief that the Lord
never permits the light of faith wholly to be extinguished in any human heart,
however faint the light may glow. The Lord has provided that there shall still
be there a spark which, with teaching, with the spirit of righteousness, with
love, with tenderness, with example, with living the Gospel, shall brighten and
glow again, however darkened the mind may have been."
President Clark pictured the spark nearly
hidden, almost smothered by the ashes of transgression. It may be so small that
the person can’t feel its warmth. The heart may be hardened. Even the Holy
Spirit may have been forced to withdraw. But the spark still lives, and glows,
and may be fanned to flame. What
a great promise! We only need to have a
hope and desire that things will work out.
Growing our faith isn't a simple task,
we do have to put effort into it. In my
earlier example of canning fruit and jam, they didn’t put themselves into the
jars. I had to put in several
woman-hours in by picking the fruit, sometimes in cold and rainy weather, then
spend many more hours in a hot kitchen with tired sore feet and back to
accomplish my goal of food in the winter for my family. In turn, how we live our lives increases or
diminishes our faith. Prayer, obedience, honesty, purity of thought and deed,
and unselfishness increase faith. Without these, faith diminishes. Why did the
Savior say to Peter, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not”? Because there is an adversary who delights
in destroying our faith! Be relentless in protecting your faith.
"Faith never demands an answer to
every question but seeks the assurance and courage to move forward, sometimes
acknowledging, “I don’t know everything, but I do know enough to continue on
the path of discipleship.”
" your faith did not begin at birth,
and it will not end at death. Faith is a choice. Strengthen your faith."
I
pray that we can follow the council given by Elder Russell M. Nelson who encourages
us to "Day after day, on your path toward your eternal destiny, increase
your faith. Proclaim your faith! Let your faith show!"
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