Life is...compassion!

3 Nephi 17

One of my favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon, and there are a lot. Of favorites, I mean. In my hard copy of my scriptures, I have this chapter titled "The Day That Almost Wasn't". I'm sure I picked that up from an institute instructor somewhere along the way. During this time in the Book of Mormon, Christ is visiting the Americas. These chapters are the crowning event of The Book of Mormon and there are some incredible gems in there. In this specific chapter, Christ has been teaching the multitude for what we can only imagine has been several hours. The people at this point must be exhausted. Sometimes, it's all I can do to make it through 3 hours of church. These people have just seen the Savior of the World. They have felt the nail prints in His hands and in His feet and listened to Him teach them. As human beings, they have got to be exhausted! Emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically. Totally and completely. Jesus recognizes this in verse 2 of chapter 17, when He says " I perceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot understand all my words" and He tells the people to go home & ponder on what He has taught them. But then, in verse 5, He sees into their hearts and their souls, and He sees their faith. Because of their faith, Christ knew He could do what He did next. As it records, "they were in tears, and did look steadfastly upon him as if they would ask him to tarry a little longer with them." Here these people are exhausted, but they still want Him to be with them. Christ responds, "my bowels are filled with compassion towards you."

And here comes my favorite part.

He shows them. They are exhausted. Their minds can't take any more instruction. But I would dare bet they learn more from what Christ does next than by anything else. He blesses them. He asks them to bring their sick, the lame, the blind, the deaf, the leprous, the maimed, any that are withered or that are afflicted in any manner. He then heals them. Every. Single. One. Christ takes each individual person and heals them of whatever ailment they have. One by one, He removes the injuries, the sicknesses, the weaknesses. He doesn't limit who He heals. He doesn't say "oh you're not sick enough". He doesn't judge what the issue was. He of all people knows what they have been dealing with, but it doesn't matter to Him. He just has compassion and loves them and heals them.

I love the term "withered" that He uses. I looked that one up. I know what it means, but there's often some great insights when consulting the dictionary. Withered means "shrunken or faded as if from loss of moisture or sustenance". I feel like I would be classified in that category. Sometimes, we go through life and go through the motions, but we are missing that sustenance. We miss that connection that brings life and happiness. Connection with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, connection with others and connection with ourselves. Christ has the power that He can fix it, and has the compassion that He does fix it. He is the only one who knows how to fix exactly what we need, when we need it.

So here's our part.

I have been learning a lot about love lately, and specifically, love verses fear. Love helps us grow, fear keeps us from moving on. But from this, I have learned that love will win. Love can conquer all. Love can remove the hurt and anger. We need to love ourselves and love others. I have had to break through that barrier. I have tried to live and love like Christ. I have had to forgive and not judge. I still find myself at times having the conversations I wish I could and realized, it was all about me. I then focus on loving. To be like Christ, we need to show that compassion, as He did. Reaching out to others, stepping out of our comfort zone, whether it's in the form of taking chips and salsa, fatty fat french fries, chocolate chocolate chocolate chip cookies, or a shoulder to cry on or leaving someone alone for a time, we find whatever we can that that person would need, and we rise to the occasion to do it. Becoming like Christ isn't easy, but as we do something about it and reach out, Christ makes up the difference of what we lack. His compassion fills us and fills what we are trying to become, like Him.

Life is...a cycle

This week, I have been studying cycles, specifically the pride cycle in the Book of Mormon. It's amazing to me how many times the Nephites fall into this cycle, and it's seen several times very quickly in the book of Helaman especially.  The people prosper and have success, then the prosperity goes to their head and they get proud. They forget who their prosperity comes from. They forget the blessings the Lord has bestowed upon them. When they do this, they think it was all themselves and they then consider themselves better than their fellow men. This then leads to classes, status, segregation and a lack of love and charity.

What these people forget, is that all things good come from Heavenly Father. He blesses the people when they keep the commandments. But then they think they did it all on their own and then the Nephites stopped keeping the commandments, and stopped looking out for others. Things started to go downhill. Troubles came. Wars and bloodshed came. The Nephites stopped being successful in their ventures. They began to see their own nothingness and began to see the Lord's hand in all that they had been able to accomplish. This, I have learned, is the definition of humility. The Nephites began again to be humble, to hearken to the prophets, and to follow the Lord.

Are we really any different?

We often go through the same issues, the same cycles, the same weaknesses and addictions. We feel that we are doing good and that we therefore don't need to follow as closely or as tightly as we used to. We think that we can do it on our own. when we start doing it on our own, our Heavenly Father in his wisdom, allows us our choice. This is prime time for Satan to step in. He then convinces us that we did do it all on our own and that we can take our own paths, make our own choices based on what we want to do. We grow further and further away from our Heavenly Father, from truth. Then we hit rock bottom. Something comes, and Satan is no where to be found to try to comfort us. He abandons us as quickly as he started after us. We begin to question what we thought we knew and we find that the things we do know are what keeps us close to Heavenly Father. We realize that we did do great, but we did great because we trusted Him and followed Him. If only we could stay this way.

Break the cycle.