Skip to main content

Obedience

Last week in Come, Follow Me, we learned about the importance of the Sabbath day--especially how important it is to the Lord.  The scriptures tell us that the consequence for not keeping the Sabbath day holy was the death penalty.  This seems really harsh.  But as I pondered that throughout the week some ideas came to me.

By imposing a very strict penalty on a law, it gave the Israelites very few choices.  1)They could choose not to obey the law and die. 2) They could obey the law out of fear. 3)  They could obey the law with resentment. 3) They could obey the law with love for the Lord. 

The outcome of the latter three seem the same.  They all live. But those who obey laws out of love open themselves up to grow in spiritual capacity.  Obedience would open their heart and allow them to learn from the Lord the importance of using the principle of obedience in obtaining blessings from Him.  Up to that point, the Israelites had seen and participated in many miracles, but without much change of heart.  I think, in part, that was because they hadn't learned how to obey.  The Lord had to start somewhere with them to teach them the wonderful blessings of obedience and to learn to trust in His commandments to bring blessings.  By imposing such a harsh consequence, most would choose to obey and hopefully many would eventually obey because of love, and become more spiritually stable instead of needing to rely on Moses or external objects (a golden calf) for spiritual stability.  

As I pondered this in connection to our move to China--a country with very different laws than we are used to, I thought about our Article of Faith stating that we believe in honoring and sustaining the laws of the land in which we live.  So I have a choice.  I can obey the laws in China out of fear or resentment.  But that would cut my spiritual growth way back.  Or I can obey because I respect the people among whom I will be living who surely are among those who just don't know where to find the truth.  I can obey because I love my Savior who loves all of His children wherever they live.  If my obedience is given in love, then I allow my spiritual capacity to expand instead of shrink.  

I find the power of obedience to commandments a fascinating thing.  As we learn to obey and obey out of love instead of obeying just to avoid negative consequences the result is not only more blessings, but more commandments.  D&C 59:4 tells us the blessings of obedience: "And they shall also be crowned with blessings from above, yea and with commandments not a few, and with revelations in their time."  This is the way I want to pattern my life. We will lovingly comply with the laws of China.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

While We Are Waiting: Temples!

I love the temple.  When I first learned of the possibility of us moving to China in December 2019, one of my first questions was "How can I leave the temple?"  That question was answered in part during the closure of temples in 2020. However, when the joint venture was signed and Tom was officially offered the position in China in November 2020, I began fasting and praying that I would be able to attend the temple just once before we left.  Our original flights were for July 7, 2021 and just a few weeks before that, our temple opened up and miraculously we were able to get 2 appointments for baptisms and 4 other appointments for Tom and I before our departure date.  I can't express my deep gratitude for those 6 precious appointments.  Then when we didn't obtain a visa in time for those flights and access to nearby temples was given, I took up a new hobby.  Temple scheduling.  The girls teased me it was a bit of an obsessed hobby; but since we will go ...
2 comments
Read more

An Accomplishment!

 The process: Cut the recipe in half so that the bread will fit in your teensy tinsy oven. Convert everything to metric--- ingredient amounts and water temperature. Get your purified water to the right temperature. Measure ingredients out. Mix it up.  Humidity changes things.... Hope you did it right. Shape and let rise. Convert oven temperature to Celsius. My little oven heats up nicely, but you get to guess when it is preheated. Notice there are no smoke alarms in your kitchen. Hmm.   Decrease the cook time and cross your fingers that is right.  Add a cooking thermometer to the shopping list. Let it cool for a long time because you only have a small serrated knife for cutting it. Slice and eat.  It probably could have tasted pretty awful and we would have thought that bit of home tasted very delightful!  But it was quite good! Needs a little more salt, but that is an easy adjustment.   And it could have been crustier, but we're at a point o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Food

Food has been one of the hardest aspects of our quarantine.  Food is emotionally comforting, so we're missing out on that--especially the girls.  We're not used to the smells.  It is cafeteria type foods.  Much of the time we don't know what it is.  Always an adventure...not always a pleasant one!  That said, incoming meals are the most exciting time of the day.  Originally we were getting 4 meals a day.  But the only thing the girls were eating from them was the rice and there is way too much rice in that container for one person.  So we had it cut back to two. Breakfast is the hardest meal of the day.  I already knew I didn't love Chinese breakfasts.  Tom had told me that every breakfast he saw from watching quarantining videos had a boiled egg.  I knew I could eat that if I had some salt and pepper.  So I brought some.  We're doing okay on the salt--supply wise.  We're rationing on the pepper.  I'm so tha...
Post a Comment
Read more