We interupt our thoughts on hope to bring you this.....

I came across this two-minute video earlier this week and can't stop watching it! Every time I do I get the chills, and I might even have shed a couple of tears. This is one of my favourite talks of all time and I love how well it has been produced here. In a roundabout way we can link this to hope in that we hope we can become all that we are meant to be.

Elder Uchtdorf's words inspired me last October and they continue to inspire me now. I hope you can feel the love our Heavenly Father has for us through his beautiful and hopeful message.

Going Dutch

I love words. I love when talented people, or more specifically people blessed by the spirit, can communicate things in such a way that help your heart understand something that is important. I read a beautiful quote some months ago that I reflect on if things in my life aren't quite what I need them to be. I think this ties beautifully into the idea of cultivating hope in our lives. We have the hope that even when things don't or aren't working out as we would plan (or hope), good can always come. Substitute "a child with disability" for whatever trial, burden or pain you may have in your life (now or sometime) and I guarantee you will have a new perspective.

By Emily Kingsley:

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel.

It's like this......When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go.

Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland.""Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandt's.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Any thoughts or experiences where this has proved true for you?

March: Hope

The Latter Day Saint poet Carol Lynn Pearson once penned:

An unseeming design for ascension -

That with a cross and a crown of briar,

We should lift Christ toward Heaven

So that he could lift us higher.

How blessed we are, during these less than tranquil times, to know that there is purpose to our life here on earth and an expectation of a hereafter so glorious that we cannot even begin to comprehend it. That because of the Atonement and resurrection of our Saviour Jesus Christ, we can not only live forever with our Father in Heaven, but we can access him here and now during our sojourn in mortality.

However such an eternal perspective can be hard to remember on a daily basis when we are surrounded by distressing circumstances on a global scale or in our individual lives and as a result feel discouraged, anxious or lonely. Elder Uchtdorf gave us a powerful remedy for such feelings in his talk "The Infinite Power of Hope" during the last General Conference:

"Hope is one leg of a three-legged stool, together with faith and charity. These three stabilize our lives regardless of the rough or uneven surfaces we might encounter at the time. The scriptures are clear and certain about the importance of hope. The Apostle Paul taught that the scriptures were written to the end that we 'might have hope.'

"Hope is a gift of the Spirit. It is a hope that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection, we shall be raised unto life eternal and this because of our faith in the Savior. This kind of hope is both a principle of promise as well as a commandment, and, as with all commandments, we have the responsibility to make it an active part of our lives and overcome the temptation to lose hope. Hope in our Heavenly Father’s merciful plan of happiness leads to peace, mercy, rejoicing, and gladness. The hope of salvation is like a protective helmet; it is the foundation of our faith and an anchor to our souls."

Used with faith and demonstrated as charity, hope is, as Elder Uchtdorf also taught: "not knowledge, but rather the abiding trust that the Lord will fulfil his promise to us".

I testify that although we may be weighed down with concerns that are by no means trivial in the eyes of the Lord, if we will develop a "perfect brightness of hope" we will be blessed with peace and a knowledge that the Lord makes promises of which He is always a keeper.

"My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death, but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever" (Moroni 9:25)

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Our goal for this month, as we think of developing our hope, is for us to look up 5-10 scriptures in the Topical Guide and write down how they make us feel about the prinicple and commandment of hope. As you feel so impressed, choose one to work on this month. As we do this, we can be guaranteed to feel a greater safety in our lives.