Chapter 11-B "The Miracle of Ordinary Things"

“Our niece, Kelsey and her husband Spencer asked all of the family to fast for peace and strength as their 9-month-old undergoes a very serious cranial surgery. We held that fast yesterday and all the Utah family gather to pray and break that fast together. They united in purpose and faith that the doctors would be guided during the procedure and that her parents and grandparents could have peace as they await the outcome. 

We can expect that, if it is the will of our heavenly Father, that will indeed be the case! In fact, I’m sure it will be, but the miracle won’t be that she is healed. It will be that her life was granted in the first place, that we are united together as an extended family (of differing religions), able to exercise that kind of extraordinary faith in their behalf! 

On our mission, we invite people to believe the extraordinary....such as exercising faith for healing, we teach about Jesus performing miracles like walking on water, multiplying bread and fish, raising the dead. We teach of miraculous translation of gold plates, and the visitation of angels. Some people are hard-pressed to believe extraordinary things. While it is understandable that we may be challenged by the extraordinary, we shouldn’t be, because ordinary things are actually far more phenomenal. 

Lawrence Corbridge says, "The most phenomenal occurrences of all time, the most amazing wonders, the most astoundingly awesome developments—are the most common and widely recognized. They include: you and me! “From the sub atomic particles to the farthest reaches of the cosmos and everything in between, including all of the wonders of life, is there anything greater than those ordinary realities? No. Nothing else even comes close. You can’t begin to imagine, much less describe, anything greater than what already is...

”In light of that, nothing else should surprise us. It should be easy to believe that with God all things are possible. The healing of Aliana’s little skull and the brain it houses is not nearly as amazing as the existence of her body in the first place. If it exists, it follows that it can certainly be fixed when it is broken. The greater event is not in the healing I'm certain will take place, but in its creation in the first place! 

More amazing than raising the dead is that we live at all. A silent heart that beats again is not nearly as amazing as the heart that beats within you right now. More phenomenal than resurrection is birth. The greater wonder is not that life, having once existed, could come again, but that it ever exists at all. I look at our newest granddaughter, Kyah, with all the wonder and miracle that she is, given all the challenges involved in her birth and arrival here! She reminds me, as does every new life, that we are all miracles! 

 The wonder is not what the human eye may see, rather, that it sees anything at all. How can you believe in extraordinary things such as angels and gold plates and your divine potential? Easy, just look around and see the ordinary and believe." 

 I don’t know if pigs will ever sprout wings and fly, but if they do, flying pigs will never be nearly as amazing as the ordinary pig in the first place. 

I heard someone say recently, “It is okay to have doubts.” I wonder about that. The Lord said, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” I suppose it maters what you’re looking at to be able to do so without fear. I choose to look to Him so doubt and fear can disappear behind the wonder of what I can already see. 

 I have a lot of questions; but, like Lawrence Corbridge, I don’t have any doubts, especially when it comes to such ordinary things as life and love, the value of serving others and the miracle of being able to experience peace surrounded by chaos! It's in the ordinary that I can see the extraordinary and believe!

Chapter 11- A “Pickles”

I’ve been thinking a lot about how pickles are made. A pretty bland vegetable gets placed into some brine of garlic and other spices and after a long period of time marinading in the brine, it becomes a pickle. But what if you were to put the cucumber into sugar water? What might it become then? Not a pickle, but something sweet. Simply by changing the ingredients of the marinade- you change the outcome of the cucumber from something sour to something sweet. Add wasabi to the marinade and now everything taste like wasabi. You get the idea.

 Now I don’t know if you soaked a pickle long enough in sugar if it would reverse it’s taste to something sweet, but I do know it can be done with people! You’ve heard the adage- “You are what you think...or as a man thinketh, so is he.” Those who were formally marinated or consumed in all the negativity and skepticism of life have changed what they spend their time doing and seeing and listening to and have become something else entirely. Sweet with purpose, optimism and peace. It’s not enough to take yourself out of the brine, you have to put something else in its place, (especially with meaningful things. Things that build repour, that make a difference in the personal lives of others, that lifts people up. Things that are, quite frankly focused outward) but it can be done! And it doesn’t take as long as one might expect.

 Never has there been a day when we have access to so much that can grab our attention away from that which is most important! I know the headlines are bleak! It’s all unfolding just as was foretold. However, nothing is yet so dark as it was for Moroni after he’d watched the complete destruction of his society and war decimate his people. No time could have been more desperate and darker. Yet Moroni writes that hope does not mean ignoring or being naïve about the world’s problems; it means having faith in heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, whose power is greater and more everlasting than those problems! He’s essentially saying, don’t let the reality of world events “weigh you down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his ...mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind” instead! (Moroni 9:25) 

 It’s a choice we make! We can choose to “marinate” in the despair, ugliness and distrust of the world; weighed down by their heavy cares, OR to “marinate” more in those things that lift us and others up; changing our environment, trying to bring others some measure of peace and charity. I can tell you by practice and witness of others who do it, the latter taste so much better!