Yesterday, I shared part of a visualization exercise that I did. It was very personal and for me quite meaningful. Today, I want to share the other half of the story. In my visualization, I met with the Savior and instead of seeing His face, I saw the face of an acquaintance that I had been helping. The message was clear to me immediately–God is serious about his desire for us to serve Him personally, by personally serving those we find ourselves associating with. (Matthew 25:40, D&C 42:38) He is pleased when we sincerely give of ourselves in order to help another.
At the end of my post yesterday, I related that the Savior turned me around and invited me to sit and when I did so, instead of seeing the gentle slope I had climbed to reach Him, I saw a valley, similar to the pictures I’ve seen of Monument Valley in Utah and Arizona. I wondered why I was seeing this and I began to ponder the question I had started my meditation with. I wanted to know how to love the people more deeply, more sincerely. It is one thing to say and another thing to feel. you know when you have it right and when you are still trying to get it.
Tomorrow, I will wander from one butte to another seeking to understand how to infuse the feeling of love instead of the thought of love into my intentions and actions.
As I stared out at the valley, I saw these great buttes rising from the desert floor and I thought about the words of Moroni and Paul in describing charity or the pure love of Christ that we are urged to make part of us. Later I searched the scriptures to better remember what was written about Charity.
When we begin to posses this Christ-like love, we become long suffering or patient with with others mistakes and offenses. We become kind and free of envy. We become patient and peaceful. We become inherently positive, thinking no evil. The man or woman imbued with such love seeks truth instead of iniquity and is forgiving. Such a woman or man, as a habit, believes and hopes and endures. (Moroni 7:45) A person full of charity does not think about recognition and praise. This person is humble in its truest sense. A person full of love does not act to draw attention to him or herself in any way, negatively or positively. Such a person it truly focused on the needs of others. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
Looking out across this valley, I knew that I would need to visit each butte in future meditations and visit the people there, because that was the point. On each butte or around each one would be gathered those who would help me develop Christ-like love. I realized that these people are already all about me, scattered through my life. The buttes, I think, are to help me recognize what is being done as I focus on one characteristic of charity at a time. For example, If charity suffers long, who are the people in my life that I feel make me suffer long. As I visit the butte of long suffering, what will i learn? If I can learn to see and think differently about the people that exasperate me and try my patience and those that offend me, even in small ways, or those that make me feel inferior in one way or another, I hope that I will be able to better feel love in hey heart instead of speak about it. I want to move the pure love of Christ from my head to a place where I can feel it and know that it is mine to first hold and cherish and then to share.
Yesterday, I watched the buttes from a distance. Tomorrow, I will wander from one butte to another seeking to understand how to infuse the feeling of love instead of the thought of love into my intentions and actions.