I can’t believe I finally found the answer. And all that time it was right under my nose. Looking and looking, and finding erroneous results and all the time wondering what was going on, there must be something more to this.
Coming across people who “couldn’t see the forest for the trees” looking for one little detail and missing the whole complex context of nature that was there.
Granted, my search did bring me into contact with lovely people I would never have met otherwise, and I did pick up some wonderful pieces of information. But it was hard to pull it all into a congruent whole.
I was rereading an old journal entry I’d written about a year ago recently, where I'd had an epiphany and drawn a massive conclusion about my own wellbeing based on a few things that I had read in a book, things which were being contradicted at the same time by something else a friend had given me in another book. It was all very confusing and frustrating.
And now (finally) I have the answer in my hands, a recommendation from a friend. Its just so logical and yet hard to believe – and yet it must be true. I trust the author implicitly and I don’t even know him. But his refutation of other things I’ve read is absolutely brilliant.
And next time I will get to the point of what this is all about. (Once I finish reading his book).
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Small Miracles
Last week was stake conference. I went to the Saturday evening session and I took a lot of notes but I’m not sure how much I mentally absorbed. Only two things really stood out to me and that was from the final speaker Elder Neilson. He said fear is the opposite of faith, and we need to move forward with faith and not be too concerned with whats going on. Earthquakes and tsunamis are the Lords way of testifying that He is coming back.
But what really got me was a story that he shared and the experience I had both before and after conference. That morning my sister had wanted to go garage saleing and I ended up tagging along. I initially wasn’t too keen on the idea as I wanted to go to the Tamahere Farmers market, but I did end up getting some stuff I really liked, really cheap. As we were driving around looking for signs we saw one for a place called Derby St. I didn’t know where that was, but I saw this girl on the side of the road who I recognized from Institute even though I didn’t know her name. I asked her, but she didn’t know, so we kept going and found it in the end.
That night Elder Neilson shared a story about people who pray for others to receive help, even though they themselves could just offer the help that those people need eg a family leaving church discovering they have a flat tyre and need a jack, and someone else, instead of offering their jack, take them inside, pray about the situation, ring the bishop to come help them and then go outside and leave.
After church the girl I’d seen that morning came and said Hi and that she had just moved to Hamz and didn’t really know her way around yet. Then she went away outside to call her ride.
When I walked outside and saw her she had a puzzled upset look on her face, and I remembered the story and had this strong feeling like I should go check if she had a ride home. And guess what? She didn’t. Her ride was asleep and wasn’t answering her phone. And then it just seemed like everything had fallen into place, as though designed by some divine hand of providence that was looking out for her – the fact I’d run into her that morning, the fact they had shared that story and that she’d come up and met me after the conference.
What made it seem even better was that I was about to go visit my friend at her house and this girl lived on the way there. It just seemed so perfectly lined up that I was blown away. The stuff going on in Christchurch, Japan and issues in the middle east are just so dejecting and I find it hard to not focus on all the negativity, but when something good like that happens, a small miracle, it just picks me up and makes things seem more worthwhile.
But what really got me was a story that he shared and the experience I had both before and after conference. That morning my sister had wanted to go garage saleing and I ended up tagging along. I initially wasn’t too keen on the idea as I wanted to go to the Tamahere Farmers market, but I did end up getting some stuff I really liked, really cheap. As we were driving around looking for signs we saw one for a place called Derby St. I didn’t know where that was, but I saw this girl on the side of the road who I recognized from Institute even though I didn’t know her name. I asked her, but she didn’t know, so we kept going and found it in the end.
That night Elder Neilson shared a story about people who pray for others to receive help, even though they themselves could just offer the help that those people need eg a family leaving church discovering they have a flat tyre and need a jack, and someone else, instead of offering their jack, take them inside, pray about the situation, ring the bishop to come help them and then go outside and leave.
After church the girl I’d seen that morning came and said Hi and that she had just moved to Hamz and didn’t really know her way around yet. Then she went away outside to call her ride.
When I walked outside and saw her she had a puzzled upset look on her face, and I remembered the story and had this strong feeling like I should go check if she had a ride home. And guess what? She didn’t. Her ride was asleep and wasn’t answering her phone. And then it just seemed like everything had fallen into place, as though designed by some divine hand of providence that was looking out for her – the fact I’d run into her that morning, the fact they had shared that story and that she’d come up and met me after the conference.
What made it seem even better was that I was about to go visit my friend at her house and this girl lived on the way there. It just seemed so perfectly lined up that I was blown away. The stuff going on in Christchurch, Japan and issues in the middle east are just so dejecting and I find it hard to not focus on all the negativity, but when something good like that happens, a small miracle, it just picks me up and makes things seem more worthwhile.
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