"A Perfect Brightness of Hope"

Looks like my blog has become a gallery for my talks in church. I'm definitely cool with that. Last week, while visiting Robbie in Talya in Texas, I was asked to speak in church this Sunday. All week long I thought I would talk about my new obsession: family history research and the importance of choice. After a week of recovering from an awesome vacation, moving out of my duplex apartment,  attending a two-day inspiring seminar, and mulling over my chosen topic all week, I sat down to write my talk Saturday night. As soon as I started writing, I knew I needed to make a major shift in focus. I still got in a little idea of family history and choice, but below is the talk I felt inspired to write. Thanks to my dad for letting me talk through my thoughts and helping me clarify themes. Love you! 

“A Perfect Brightness of Hope”

Melinda Rich

8/9/15 – Parley’s 7^th Ward

The guidance I was given for writing this talk was to speak on what inspires me. Well, I hope you are all ready for a 4-hour talk because I am inspired by a lot of things. I am inspired by my Outreach committee members and honorary committee members who help us set up chairs, fold programs, smile, ask people to schooch over, and help others feel welcome at church. I am inspired by my 4-year-old nephew who while driving in Northern Arizona with my parents, asked them to pull over so he could, as he said, “look at all of the beautiful things God made.” Darling, I know. But most particularly, I am inspired by the power and potential of people’s choices, or their use of God-given agency in the present and the past.

            Let me give you a little background for these choices in the present. I teach accelerated Reading and Writing classes in a GED program that is free to the public. In the five years I have taught there, I have been surrounded by and able to help facilitate major life choices for an incredible diversity of students. I have taught teenagers in the same class with an 87-year-old WWII veteran. I have taught leather-clad bikers, recovered (and not completely recovered) meth, heroine, cocaine, etc. addicts. I have had homeless students, a “paycheck away from homeless” students, millionaires, business owners, pre-missionaries, empty nesters, single parents, the list goes on. What unifies all of them is their decision to show up in their own lives. For whatever reason, each of these students didn’t finish high school, and have found themselves in my classroom decades, years, or months later ready to try again. I wish I could say that all of them make it through. If it was dependent on my belief in them, they would, but nearly half of the thousands of students I have taught don’t make it all the way through our program. Jobs change, work schedules conflict with classes, homework is overwhelming, or they give in to the story they have been told by others or themselves that they are not smart, not capable of success, a failure.

            Those students who make it through have found inside themselves that tiny spark of hope, the belief that circumstances can change, that they can have the life they want, that it is possible and attainable. And I am privileged to be able to fan the flames. In some classes I begin with the poem Hope by Emily Dickinson. It begins:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

There is more to the poem, but doesn’t this first stanza create a beautiful image? Hope is potent. It is a present emotion, a never-ending confidence in a positive conclusion.

            That is where the tricky part comes in though because there is a lot of time in between feeling hope and the outcome, and during that length of time there is a lot of potential for breakdown. Several weeks ago, Isabel Rojas gave an incredible talk about the “mists of darkness” in Lehi’s dream or “the temptations of the devil, which blindeth the eyes, and hardeneth the hearts of the children of men, and leadeth them away into broad roads that they perish and are lost” (1 Nephi 12:17). After her talk, I looked at my students the next week and was again reminded that many of those nervous and excited people would choose to be hardened, blinded, and lost to the possibility of restarting their education and thus, negatively changing the outcome of their future and life for themselves and everyone they love.

             As I watch these two different choices unfold in my students’ thought processes and actions, I am reminded of the scripture, 2 Nephi 2:27, which states, “Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.” God in His love and mercy has plainly set these two choices before us: do we act in ways that lead to hope, light, life, possibility, and connection to God and the Savior through the Atonement, or act in ways that lead to disconnection, captivity to our emotions and appetites, and death whether physical, emotional, or spiritual - which all sounds like the misery of the devil to me.  

             That might seem simplistic, but really I think it is just God showing us it doesn’t have to be complicated. Every choice, every intention is connected back to these two foundational options set before us in the beginning– do we choose agency made possible through hope of Christ’s Atonement, or Satan’s vision of sameness where we have no ability to choose. Whatever our choice, God has made His vision for us very clear. “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). God loves us and wants us to choose Him, the Atonement, and connection to His Gospel, and yet His great love for us is manifest in D&C 93:30, that “All truth [intelligences/people] is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.” We get to choose. God cannot and will not choose for us “or else there is no existence” - no purpose for this life. Without choice, everything is the same, but that was Satan’s plan – and God isn’t going to choose that one.

              I know all of this sounds very heavy and intense, but to me it is freeing – it breaks through all of those mists of darkness – the confusion of the world, differing opinions, frustrations, heartbreak, loss, and the fear of unanswered questions that I see as I scroll through my Facebook wall, listen to presidential debates, and talk with friends and family. Our opportunity to “act for [our]sel[ves]” sets forth a clear path of intention to live and love as God does from a place of light and truth and power. One of my favorite phrases in scripture comes from 2 Nephi 31:20. It states, “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.”

                Because I can’t read this scripture to my students in class, they only get to see the steady, persistent wingbeat of hope from Emily Dickinson. In our revealed scriptures, however, we are given the truth of hope – it is a perfect brightness, a holistic vision of your possible, eternal future. This is such a beautiful way to live, and in this scripture God has given us language that shows a pattern to follow. Some of these sound easier than others, but it is clear from this scripture that we are not left alone. The equation states:

1. Press forward with steadfastness in Christ – Act with a firm, unshakable faith in the Light and Life of the World. - Believe in Him, His divinity, and the availability and efficacy of repentance through His love.
2. Have a perfect brightness of hope – again, sustain that holistic vision of your possible, eternal future
3. Have a love of God and of all men – which we all know at times may be a challenge, but as Elder Holland states in his talk, Lord, I Believe, “imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we.” Stay connected to God, love Him, and show that love by seeking to uplift those in the sphere in which He has placed us.
4. Press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ – Choose to immerse and nourish yourself with ideas that support “liberty and eternal life”, not captivity and death.
5. Endure to the end – fortify yourself, withstand challenge, hold steady in persecution, do not give up.

              The other side to the equation – the equal sign – if we do these things - “behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.” As we talked about before, we are not alone in this process. In John 14:16-18 it reads, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” When we accept the Atonement, when we take the sacrament each week and “take His name upon us” we are sanctified, made perfect and holy, so we can have the Spirit of truth abide with us always. We are told in Alma 34:36, “the Lord hath said he dwelleth not in unholy temples, but in the hearts of the righteous doth he dwell.”

Remember how hope “perches in the soul,” well this hope or the Spirit, is our guide to making decisions and discerning between truth and worldly deception. It clearly states “the world cannot receive it,” see it, or know it because it is not sanctified. The Spirit of truth or the Holy Ghost “sings the tune without the words” because the truth of eternal promise is too beautiful for words – it must be felt, received with open minds and open hearts. When we really receive it and actually open up, we can have that “perfect brightness,” the unspeakable joy of, at last, perceiving God’s love. “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). God’s love is all around us, but we must choose to see it.

We, as members of the Christ of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, know this  “perfect brightness of hope” because the 14-year-old Joseph opened himself up to the Spirit. We are the benefactors of his choice to ask for more truth, and light, and understanding. The effect of his choice continues to roll forth, and the “perfect brightness” of eternal possibility has touched us all. For many of us it inspired our ancestors to make incredible choices to leave everything they had known, leave a country, a society, family, security, and place – for the promises of the Gospel. Many of us here or others in our lives have made those same incredible decisions and left behind a life they knew for a brighter one in the Gospel. We all have access to the infinite Atonement. Our acceptance of it can, if we choose, change the trajectory of our lives today, which in turn changes the lives of our descendants - just like Joseph, our ancestors, and ward members. The only way to lose the kingdom is to harden our hearts and reject the Spirit. D&C 93:31 states, “Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.” It is my hope that all of us can make choices that lead to life and the light of the Gospel, choices that draw us closer to God, and create connections of faith and kindness, as opposed to the perceptions of fear, mistrust, hatred, captivity, and the spiritual death of the devil rampant in all societies of the world, including our own.

As we already read, my students and all of us are free to act for ourselves, but know that God’s “hand is stretched out still” (Isaiah 9:17).  He wants us to pray and ask for help. If we make choices that take even the smallest steps toward Him, if we open the door to our hearts even the tiniest bit, have that faith as a mustard seed, then “the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers” (Doctrine and Covenants 112:10). That is how our hope stays strong, through those small incremental actions that keep the flame of hope burning bright.  The future is bright, brothers and sisters, brighter than we can imagine. May we help each other along the path to see our eternal potential, or as Lucy Mack Smith said, “we must cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another and gain instruction that we may all sit down in heaven together.”