So I’m officially done with my bang up job training Elder Richards. Now I sit and watch my Hijito fly. Except I keep going back to do his job too. Generally not because he needs me to. Just because it’s refreshing to do things when I know what I’m doing. The personal Secretary gig is definitely super confusing right now. Normally it just feels like I’m waiting for disasters to strike and then frantically try to save the day. So I’m pretty stoked on the theoretical day when I stop working reactively and toss some proactivity in there. I’m not sure if proactivity is a word. It really ought to be. For right now I’m getting prepped for a Sister to get her gall bladder out while simultaneously helping an elder get an EEG in the middle of Backwardsville Peru and in the mean time dodge/diffuse the profusion of all the lesser (slightly whiny) complaints that 200 some odd missionaries can throw out. Get your game face on folks.
Hope you guys had a good Christmas. Mine was super awesome. Something I learned this week: Remember the parable of the bicycle? Dad does ask him. Well I was listening to a talk and reading some stuff and I decided that, as good as that parable is, some people misinterpret and it tends to perpetuate a misconception about grace. Everyone always seems to want to battle us about grace. How we’re trying to earn our way to heaven. Not true. We’re not earning heaven. We’re learning heaven. We’re practicing for it. Of course we’re saved by grace, but the bigger question is if we’ve been changed by grace. The scriptures make it extremely clear that no unclean thing can dwell with God, but no unchanged thing will even want to (see Alma 36). So this is where the bicycle parable comes in. Some people seem to think that our small obedience and righteousness (the few coins saved in the parable) are needed to fill the gap that stands between us and perfection. That Christ will fill the gap after all we can do. The truth is that we don’t fill any part of that gap. When Christ invested in us, he paid in full. He didn’t pay it except for a few coins. He paid it all. It is done. Christ then turns to us and offers his own requirements. These requirements are not to appease justice. They’re to help us change into more heavenly, Christ-like beings. I heard it said somewhere that, “heaven will not be heaven to those who haven’t chosen to be heavenly.” Example: remember going to EFY and there was always that one kid in your group whose parents made him come and then by the end of day one he called up his mom and shouted, “get me out of here!” Happens all the time. Why is it so awful for him but so many other people have excellent experiences? I used to have this idea of heaven where I was sitting there nervously in a chair and Jesus was there looking at his clipboard shaking his head, informing me that I’d missed it by 5 points, then me begging him to take another look at my essay questions and so on. But I don’t think that anymore. I don’t think it will be the unrepentant sinner begging “Please, let me stay.” He’ll probably be saying, “Get me out of here!” What we are asked to do here is not to appease justice or to qualify in some mystical account for Christ to fill our gaps. Grace is not a booster engine that kicks on after “all we can do” is reached. It is a power received daily as we continue in our weakness to do “all we can do” in any given day or moment. If Christ didn’t require this practice we would never become what we need to be. This perspective is easy to see in things like learning the piano, but very difficult to see in learning heaven. When kids mess up and hit wrong notes in piano no one says they’re unworthy to keep playing. We just expect them to give a continuous effort. It´s all a part of the learning process. Grace is not the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the light that moves us through the tunnel. It is not a finishing touch; it is The Finisher’s touch. It is not the absence of God’s high expectations; it is the presence of His power. When we depend on grace we don’t discover, as some would say, that Christ requires nothing; we discover why he requires so much.
So there you go.
-Elder Brian
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