Sunday's Spiritual Thought

Psalms 145: 9 "the Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works"

If only I could describe to each and every one of you how much I have grown while being away at school. It feels like it has been a spiritual growth spirt! I feel like there has been this constant push from the Lord that has been experience after experience to make me grow immensely. I am grateful for that because I know the mission I have to fulfill on this Earth. I feel inadequate to what I'm supposed to do but I know that with the Lord's help and my strongest efforts, I can fulfill that mission and be that strong person I know I have to be. My growth is maybe something that you can't see when I come home for short periods but I can assure you that the lasting effects of this semester will stay with me forever. I feel such complete joy at what I have learned and developed here. My decision to come to Utah State, live where I have, and participate in everything I have has been truly inspired every step of the way. I wish I could express every ounce of joy and gratitude I have. I can attest to it filling every fiber of my being and having the spirit so close is a true blessing. My testimony of the scriptures, prayer, the atonement, love, and the guiding hand of the Lord have increased ten fold. I feel infinite gratitude for these things and the effect they have on changing my life.

The topic which I am writing about today was manifest to me clearly this week. I was going to start this post by telling you how hard of a week it has been for me. I soon realized that doing that would take away from the message that I really want to share. So all I will say is that this week has been the hardest and most stressful I have had to endure all semester. Today, someone in sacrament meeting said this, "Life is beautiful. For every bad or hard time I have had, I have had a beautiful and great one". I would restate this to match the way I am feeling. Life is Beautiful. For every hard or trying time I have had, the Lord has made up the difference and magnified my happy times ten-fold through his tender mercies. That is the lesson I learned this week; the Lord's tender mercies. Although it was a hard week to endure I truly was given tender mercies to keep me going and to show me that the Lord will never forget about me.

1 Ne. 1:20 "But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance". My favorite part of this scripture is "to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance". Tender mercies are powerful and they give immense power to those who receive them, even unto deliverance. I feel like I really was delivered multiple times this week by the power of the Lord. Elder Bednar defines tender mercies as, "the very personalized and individualized blessings, strength, protection, assurances, guidance, loving-kindnesses, consolation, support, and spiritual gifts which we receive from and because of and through the Lord Jesus Christ". The more I have thought about it, I realize that I have received tender mercies many times and just not recognized it. What a sad thought. So I made the decision this week, as a result of my experience to take President Eyring's challenge and keep a Tender Mercies Journal that I will write in every night. I know that he would not have challenged us to do so unless it would bless our lives. I am anxious to receive those blessings, because heaven knows how much I need them. :) Elder Bednar also addresses what the scripture meant by being chosen to receive tender mercies. "I testify that the tender mercies of the Lord are available to all of us and that the Redeemer of Israel is eager to bestow such gifts upon us. To be or to become chosen is not an exclusive status conferred upon us... Rather, it is our hearts and our aspirations and our obedience which definitively determine whether we are counted as one of God's chosen". I truly believe in God's tender mercies to each of us and am grateful for everything I have learned and received in the past 4 months. I know this has been time consuming, but thank you to each of you for reading. I will leave you with one last quote by Elder Bednar. "...the Lord's tender mercies do not occur randomly or merely by coincidence. Faithfulness and obedience enables us to receive these important gifts and, frequently, the Lord's timing helps us to recognize them. We should not underestimate or overlook the power of the Lord's tender mercies. The simpleness, the sweetness and the constancy of the tender mercies of the Lord will do much to fortify and protect us in the troubled times in which we do now and will yet live. When words cannot provide the solace we need or express the joy we feel, when it is simply futile to explain that which is unexplainable, when logic and reason cannot yield adequate understanding about the injustices and inequities in life, when mortal experience and evaluation are insufficient to produce a desired outcome, and when it seems that perhaps we are totally alone, truly we are blessed by the tender mercies of the Lord and made mighty even unto the power of deliverance". I add my testimony to his. Thanks again for reading this lengthy post. :)