It's Thanksgiving and I have so much to be grateful for.
First of all, this little guy opened his mission call last night. Can you even believe that he's old enough to go?
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| PS- this is the cutest picture in the history of mankind |
He's all grown up and ready to serve the Lord. He's going to the Texas San Antonio mission and will be speaking Espanol. The craziest part is that my Uncle Steve (my dad's brother) is currently the Mission President there. My brother is going to have his uncle as his mission president! He gets to go to the mission home and see my aunt and our cousins... he gets to work alongside family. I'll see him nearly every day while he's in the MTC because of my job and then he is flying on down to Texas under the watchful care of more Joneses. It was such a sweet tender mercy. Heavenly Father really loves Johnny and loves the work. It is just overwhelming. I'm so excited.
I could list a bunch of other things I'm grateful for but I actually want to just highlight one more. It occurred to me the other day that when we profess to have a perfect God, we also profess his perfection in every aspect. This means that we have a God that is perfect in creation, in music, in art, in celebration, in love, in family, in thanksgiving. I've been thinking particularly about how He inspires His children to partake in that perfection to beautify this world and enrich and deepen our experience here. This happens for me quite often and I was reminded today of one particular aspect of God-like perfection that I've encountered.
I don't profess to have much of a passion for poetry (despite my being a literature major...) but when I was nineteen, I read this poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson and it had a very significant impact on my life. VERY significant. It was one of those moments when you come to yourself and realize who you really are and what it really means. Since then, I have read anything of Tennyson's that I could find. The man is a genius and what's more, he's inspired. I truly believe that. Tennyson's best friend and closest confidant died suddenly and in his grief he began writing (and continued for seventeen years) a series of poems in a work he titled "In Memoriam." In times of fear, doubt, loneliness and confusion, I return to these lines as a reminder.
If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,
I heard a voice ‘believe no more’
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer’d ‘I have felt.’
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I am beheld again
What is, and no man understands;
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson- "In Memoriam"
Thought I'd share. Happy Thanksgiving.
2 comments:
That's awesome that your brother got called to the San Antonio Spanish speaking mission. My sister has family in that mission.
Lizzie, I just have to say-- I love you. :) Thank you for being just so lovely in every way.
That section of that poem (one of my all-time favorites) is EXACTLY what I had just come to gain a testimony of this past weekend. What a tender mercy to find those words expressed so beautifully. Just had to thank you! Thank you thank you. Thank you. And um, thanks. :)
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