A Step in the Dark

Darkness      

   

     I really cannot imagine a single thing that scares more people. I myself get scared of the dark and I'm twenty years old! There is just something about the nothingness of darkness that scares us all. But it really is not the dark that we are frightened of, all though that does have its own shady characteristics. No, it is our perception of what is in the darkness, that fear of the endless possibilities of what could be there and the thought that maybe, just maybe, if we get swallowed up in darkness, we will come face to face with our true fears. Our fear of darkness really isn't a fear of darkness but more a fear of the unknown. We are afraid of what we don't understand.

     As a teenager, my mother had quadruplets (Ya, crazy, right?!). Well, because of that, the organization of the rooms in my house got switched around. I went from being right at the very top of the house, far left corner, to being in the basement, all by my lonesome. It was dark down there man! And while that was great for sleeping, that sketchy feeling of descending down into the black abyss of nothingness that was my room always seemed to get me. 

     I, like all teenagers, wanted to be free and wild... which meant hanging out with my friends from my local LDS congregation (LDS stands for Latter-Day Saints, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or Mormon Church) and school and making sure to come home by midnight for curfew and maybe, if I was feeling really crazy, getting home by 12:05. Well midnight meant that the world had gone completely black at my house, especially my black hole of a room. I can so distinctly remember just hoping that I would make it to the bottom of the stairs alive so that I could flip the light switch and whatever monster or ghoul what was hiding in the shadows would burn away to the final cry of "I'm melting, I'm melting..." and everything would be good.

     I remember the same feeling coming over me when I had to make the decision if I was going to serve a mission for the LDS Church. That same fear came into my heart when I took that finally step of leaving my family and beginning a journey that I never would have imagined would have been my service as a missionary. I didn't know what was going to happen; I couldn't see beyond the moment directly in front of me. Just like the darkness of my teenage bedroom, I was afraid because I could not see and did not understand what the future held or what the fact really were.  

     But I had faith. I was willing to act, taking those scary steps into the darkness and every time I did, I made it to the light switch and I would flip on that light and there was my room, just the way I had left it, messy with my laundry all over the floor and my bed in shambles. Nothing had changed and while I didn't understand that in the darkness, the facts were still the facts. The same applied and still applies to my mission. I took a step into the dark, facing a future that I was uncertain of, leaving to a land that was not that far from home, but still completely different, and not even having the comfort of speaking the same language as the people that I would be serving. It was terrifying! But I had faith that everything would work out and that it would be for the best.
     For me, that is what faith is; a step in the dark. We all know that life is full of these steps. They are everywhere! At every corner of our lives, we make the turn and come face to face with the darkness and obscurity of a new chapter in life, whether it be a new day or a new adventure, etc., and we are confronted with the decision: "What am I going to do? What step should I take?" Well I testify that faith is what gets us through.

     Moroni, a prophet that wrote in the Book of Mormon, penned, "...faith is things which are hoped for and not seen;..." (Ether 12:6). We can never really "see" what will occur beyond our immediate decisions. While we can be wise and weight out the outcomes, giving us a blurred vision of the future, we do not see the exact future. But just as I hoped that at the bottom of the stairs I would reach the light switch and survive the terrifying monster in the darkness, we all have hopes in our literal lives; that the outcome of our decisions will be the best they can possibly be, that we pass our math test, that our children end up better than we are are all examples of the hopes in our lives. And then the moment comes, where we stand at the top of the stairs of the decisions of our lives, looking into the darkness of the unknown, pleading that at the bottom is what we have been hoping for. Then we act. Just as I acted every night as a teenager, plunging into the darkness after the hope of a bright and safe bedroom. Actually as James put it in the New Testament (James 2:20-21), our hope and our faith is "dead" without our works, taking that first step into the dark.
     So we step forward; we take that step into the dark and we use our faith. And we come to realize that faith is not a lack of fear or a lack of doubts, but an internal power source that allows us to overcome those crushing obstacles that debilitate and cripple so many others. Just because I had taken one step into the dark did my fear of the unknown in the empty blackness of my room magically vanish? No, it was still there but my hope in the bright light that would flood the room if I would only do my part and make it down the stairs to the light switch was enough to move me to act.
     And I always made it! That is the miracle. I am alive! I never once was attacked or eaten by scary monsters at the bottom of the stairs, no matter how many times I lost my faith in the dark and thought it would happen. The miraculous fact about faith is that it always works!

Jesus Christ, the Light of the World

     But wait. We all know that there are way more challenging things and fearful circumstances in life than a dark bedroom, ones that have to do with happiness and sorrow, life and death, and salvation. The answer to those is found in Jesus Christ, the Light and Life of the world.
     In my childhood bedroom, faith in the light switch was what I had; it did not extend much farther than that. Therefore, the results of the situation went as far as the faith that I had. But it is different with Christ. He is the Son of the Living God, the only perfect person to have ever walked this Earth. He has suffered the consequence of our sins and by having faith in Him (a.k.a. believing in Him and doing what He asked), He can save us, making the results of said faith very spiritual and eternal in nature. Consequently, faith in Christ is infinitely more powerful than faith in the trivial and worldly. If faith in science or technology or in ourselves is all we have, it will never be enough and never bring us the spiritual answers and eternal blessings that we search for. I testify that faith in Jesus Christ is the first step to a happy and spiritually healthy life, one full of Gods blessings and personal satisfaction and joy. 

Pancakes, God, and Our Lives

     As a kid, I lived with my mom. I was the spoiled only child of a single mother which meant lots and lots of time together. We were best friends and one of our favorite things to do was to spend time in the kitchen. Whether that was really what we wanted to do or just that I though that because it was what my Mom had to do to get dinner for her and her little boy, I don't know but what I do know is that because of those precious days in the kitchen, I love to cook! Whatever it may be; chicken alfredo, enchiladas, teriyaki chicken, or...well you name it, I love making it all. One of my favorite things to make is pancakes.
     There are a ton of steps to making pancakes. Even with the simple, add-water-only ones, there is room for error in taking those steps. You could put to little water, you could put to much water. You can have to much mix or not enough. And what about if you don't mix well enough; you end up with super clumpy, nasty ol' pancakes. Then you have to deal with the pan...that can be the worst part. If you have the heat too low you have dry pancakes. If it is to high, you end up with the middles not cooked and the outsides burned to black little crispies.
     But why do we make pancakes? Because we want them! Maybe as a parent, as it was for my mom, she was making them for me, trying her hardest to make sure that I was more than just satisfied but happy. So we take care, following every step carefully and if we did it right...WALLAH! You have golden, delicious pancakes, ready for serving with a little bit of butter and some warm maple syrup.
     Well, life is pretty much the same way. That beautiful and delicious pancake can be our lives, individually and as families, but only if we do it right. We have to take the right steps. Obviously though, life is a bit more complicated than pancakes...We have decisions to make, decisions that determine who we will be here and in the eternities. So in all honesty, we don't want to mess up. The outcome of our lives...well let me just say that I am pretty sure none of us want to have a life like a bunch of burnt-on-the-outside-nasty-and-doughy-on-the-inside pancakes. We want to be those perfect pancakes, the ones that the maker of those pancakes intended for us to be. Well, God is the same way...
     Heavenly Father (or God as most people call Him) is just the same way. He is the Father of our spirits (Romans 8:16; Jeremiah 1:5) and when He created us, when He set off to make His pancakes, He had a purpose for it. The scriptures teach us that His purpose was and is "the immortality and eternal life of man", of us. So He didn't send us here to have us be burnt or dry or otherwise ruined pancakes, we were sent to be made into perfect pancakes. And just like any good cook, He follows specific steps in getting us there.
     Jesus Christ taught us perfectly the steps we are to take in life to create the life that He and our Heavenly Father want us to have. Just like a box or bag of pancake mix has the instructions on the back and that tantalizing picture of perfect pancakes on the front, Christ taught us those perfect steps for us to have a perfect and happy life. He not only taught them in sermon but by the way that He lived, putting for that perfect example and rooting on the whole way, encouragingly shouting "You can do it too!"
     He taught us to have faith in Him, the foundation of our lives. He pleaded with us to repent of our sins and to make promises with our Heavenly Father called covenants, the first one being baptism. We then receive the huge blessings of the Holy Spirit and the promise that if we keep these things up, if we keep having faith and keep repenting or changing for the better spiritually and keep recommitting to those promises that we make with God, that we will be saved and end up with God once more.
     That is a pretty good promise, isn't it? The chance to be with God...I can't think of anything better than...wait...what about our families?! Well that is part of Christ's promise to us, that we can make it with our families too, because lets be honest, who really eats only one pancake at a time? NO! We eat in stacks of three, four, five (and for those big families out there 8,10,15...) and that is the way God wants us, all together.
     And that is the purpose, the reason that we start the journey; so that we reach the end and it is the best ending that we could possibly have. So lets keep on keeping on! We can be those perfect pancakes, we can return to God, but we have to make those steps, in the right order and at the right time. It's all about those steps...

The Awkward First Step

     I imagine that every blogger has experienced this moment: the awkward first step of getting a blog started. It is pretty coincidental that, of all things, that is what I want to talk about in this here blog; steps. I firmly believe that life is made up of millions of them, these little steps, and they all have to do with where we are going. As a person, as a blogger, or in any role we have in life, there is always a purpose, a goal, that we are looking for, striving to reach, and our steps are the action by action course we take to get there. My goal here with this blog is to share my faith and support to all of us out there who are on this long, step by step path back to our Father in Heaven, because isn't that the ultimate goal? Aren't we here for a purpose? I know that we are and that our day by day steps forward are how we will make it there. So here I going, taking this step, and moving forward in faith.

 ~ Caleb Arave