Talk intended for Milnerton ward sacrament meeting 19 Feb 2023, but I gave about a quarter of it due to having about 5 minutes. So here it is for those interested in reading the other 16 minutes or so. The two previous speakers (Daphne van den Berg and Allen Torr) laid a wonderful foundation for the few minutes that I took, so all was good...
Introduction
Who had to be fed, dressed, even had stinky nappies changed, or had to be lovingly rocked to sleep as a baby?
Who had a first day of school at about 6 years of age?
Dumb questions, huh? Duh! Who did not?
Can you remember your birth, or having nappies changed, or being rocked to sleep as a baby, even that first day at school?
Can you remember what you ate for your main meal four days ago, and how it tasted? I presume that you had at least one meal four days ago? What details do you remember?
Can you remember the experience that you had when you, as Eve or Adam, partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil – you know – when you learned to distinguish between the opposites of good and evil, light and darkness, bitter and sweet, health and sickness, pleasure and pain? Or are you, as I am, still learning that important spirit of discernment?
I do not have any memories of my birth, nappies and so forth, or even my first day at school, or specifically my main meal four days ago. I do have some memories of some of the things that helped me to distinguish between those opposites. Most of what I remember has to do with the sensations of feeling, tasting, smelling, seeing, or hearing. Those feelings remind me more of, or at least as much as, the information that I learned, the details of the event or journey, or the processes involved.
One of my earliest memories is feeling – I recognised the feeling of the Spirit and that it was the same as the feeling of love in my family. I would guess that I was a little child at the time. I remember playing with the window-winder in the family car as we turned a corner near to our home and thinking that I was feeling a warm fuzzy feeling, and that warm fuzzy feeling was the same feeling that I had when the Spirit was with me and when I was feeling the love in my family. It was a comfortable, good, pleasant, sweet, healthy, brilliant feeling. That is one of my special memories – such a small and simple thing.
Eternal relationships
I recently shared something in my WhatsApp status. A meme – I think that is what it is called – that shows an elderly man lovingly kissing his elderly wife who is evidently frail, with the quote ‘Relationships don't last because they were destined to last. Relationships last long because two people made a choice to keep it, fight for it, and make it work.’
The ultimate demonstration of love is ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son.’ https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/john/3?lang=eng&id=p16#p16
I remember a young man, a member of our ward, ridiculing my faith and religion because he said that it is immoral for one man to have to suffer to atone for the wrongs of others. And so he denied the faith that he had previously professed. I know that he had felt the Spirit because I had heard him express such feelings. But he was choosing to not remember what he had felt.
I was fascinated during some of my tour guide studies this last week, learning more about our history. I was struck by hearing that a significant reason for the Great Trek was because that group of Calvinists in South Africa believed that they were God’s ancient covenant or chosen people, and that they had a work to do. I investigated that and concluded that the Dutch Reformed people would probably be those referred to. I considered what we believe – that we are the children of Abraham, and so we inherit the Abrahamic covenant. That is brought to us in our patriarchal blessings as our lineage in the house of Israel is declared – the birthright inheritance of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God’s ancient covenant people.
That Abrahamic covenant is special. Our individual covenant is special. Our Heavenly Father delights to bless His children. He said ‘Hearken and hear, O ye my people, saith the Lord and your God, ye whom I delight to bless with the greatest of all blessings, ye that hear me;’ https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/41?lang=eng&id=p1#p1
What we do with our blessings
How often has our Heavenly Father blessed you with something like a harvest of peas? He delights to pour out a blessing such as rain to water crops. And we harvest a bag full of something like peas. Don’t they taste so delightful? Sweet, juicy, round. I love them! It is a long time since I shelled a pea and ate the little peas. It makes my mouth water to think of the taste, the sensation, the delight. We then have the choice to enjoy that delightful bag of peas! Or we can choose to multiply that bag to produce even a hundred or more bags of peas.
The Lord asked a really good question in the third chapter of Malachi, eighth verse. ‘Will a man rob God?’
And then He comments on it. ‘Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
‘Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
‘Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
‘And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.
‘And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.’ https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/mal/3?lang=eng&id=p8-p12#p8
He has opened the windows of Heaven and poured out rain that enabled you and me to produce a harvest. He has given the sunlight, the oxygen the nutrients, the seed itself that made the harvest possible. He has always been faithful in blessing His children because He loves each one of us. Whether our harvest is peas, beans, wheat, maize, wool, meat, artwork, music, beautiful clothes, engineering wonders, technological devices, wages, health, beauty, love, natural beauties and resources, or whatever we are able to produce, what could we have produced if it had not been for the food that we had eaten? The very source of what makes up any of our produce is primary production – plants that we or someone grew – on which each of us relies entirely, simply for survival. He delights to bless us and is faithful in blessing us – we were born; we had our nappies changed because of loving parents or carers; we are what we are because He is faithful to us.
Will we be faithful to Him?
Our patriarchal blessing
I like a quote that I read in LDS Living – learn to see a patriarchal blessing not as a destination but a doorway to more revelation.
Where does my patriarchal blessing start? Does it start when it addresses LESLIE WARD POWRIE? Where does it end? Does it end ‘by virtue of the priesthood I hold and in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen’? Or did His communication with me start long before I was born, or had my nappies changed, or had that warm fuzzy feeling, or started school, or ate that meal four days ago, and will it end long after I breathe my last breath of mortality and my body is laid to rest?
I shared an invitation to listen to this talk in my WhatsApp Status. Some of you might have seen it. Some who saw it might have had the thought go through their mind that ‘patriarchal blessing’ reminds them of Abraham and the repeated promise made to him – in Genesis 12 ‘in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.’ https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/gen/12?lang=eng&id=3#p3
In Genesis 18 ‘Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?’ https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/gen/18?lang=eng&id=18#p18
In Genesis 22 ‘And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.’ https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/gen/22?lang=eng&id=18#p18
I am fascinated to consider how we are – how I am – part of the seed of Abraham through whom all of the families and nations of the earth shall be blessed. Are we – am I – living up to that charge?
He delights to bless us
Last week we sang hymn 96 in which we sang ‘Dearest children, God is near you, Watching o’er you day and night, And delights to own and bless you, If you strive to do what’s right. He will bless you, He will bless you, If you put your trust in him.’ He does truly delight to bless us. He sent us to school in this mortal experience with the hope that we will choose to follow Him. He wants us to choose to follow Him – the ultimate exercise of our agency is to want to choose to follow Him; to desire to choose to follow Him; to be determined to choose to follow Him. He hopes that we will choose Him – the Spirit has made it clear to me that he has no desire that any one of His children will choose to not follow Him.
My father described our patriarchal blessings somewhat as what we might have been told as we left heaven as we came down to Earth to be born – that time when we were having nappies changed and being fed, kicking and crying in frustration as we were learning to fit our fully developed spirits into those tiny little bodies. We are still learning about our divine potential and relationship. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother would have been sad to see us leave and have our memories of life with Them lost, and now we are learning to navigate the challenges of mortality as we walk by faith and not by sight. But they believe in us. They know who we are!
We are given some specific information about patriarchal blessings in the guidelines for patriarchs.
A patriarchal blessing should also
include inspired and prophetic statements about the life possibilities of the
recipient. As the Spirit directs, the patriarch identifies for the recipient
accomplishments to be realized, challenges to be overcome, and blessings to be
received. The patriarch also includes such promises, admonitions, and warnings
as he may be prompted to give. In these ways a patriarchal blessing can help
the recipient define his or her responsibilities and goals.
In each blessing the patriarch
should make clear that the realization of the promises is contingent on the
faithfulness of the recipient and the will of the Lord.
A patriarchal blessing should
encourage the person to keep the commandments and to qualify for eternal life.
. . .
The declaration of lineage is not
determined by a person’s race or nationality. Because of the scattering of
Israel among all nations of the earth, the lineage of Israel is found in people
of most races and nationalities. . . .
On the subject of declaring
lineage, Elder Dallin H. Oaks said: “A declaration of lineage is not a
scientific pronouncement or an identification of genetic inheritance. A
declaration of lineage is representative of larger and more important things. .
. . This declaration concerns the government of the kingdom of God, not the
nature of the blood or the composition of the genes of the person being
blessed” (“Patriarchal Blessings,” Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting: The
Patriarch, Jan. 8, 2005, 8).
Regardless of lineage, all who gain
a testimony of Jesus Christ and accept baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost
from the Lord’s authorized servants are accounted as Abraham’s “seed” as
promised in the Abrahamic covenant (see Abraham 2:10; Galatians 3:14; Ephesians
3:6). Therefore, the fulness of the Lord’s blessings will come to all who obey
the laws and ordinances of the gospel. . . .
Spencer W Kimball said that “Patriarchal
blessings are revelations to the recipients . . . to protect, inspire, motivate
toward activity and righteousness.
“An inspired patriarchal blessing
could light the way and lead the recipient on a path to fulfillment. It could
lead [him or her] to become a new [person] and to have . . . a new heart” (The
Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 505).
Conclusion
We may not remember our birth or infancy, or even many things from the past as we progressed towards becoming those who do the guiding and nurturing of infants. Parents may not even have clear memories of the births of their children, feeding and nursing them, or changing their nappies. But those were real parts of our lives – as babies, and in due course as parents. Similarly, we do not remember every detail of our experience, growth and progress along our eternal paths towards becoming like our Heavenly Parents. They want us to grow and become like Them – They want us to want to choose to become like Them and then to pursue that objective in our eternal journeys towards become – may I call it – Divine Adults? We pray ‘Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.’ As we reflect on the prayer that the Lord taught His disciples to pray in the sermon on the mount that we are studying in Come, Follow Me at present, may we strive to become perfect, merciful and holy as He is? Our patriarchal blessings are part of the personal guidance that each of us can receive on that straight and narrow way towards our divine destiny.
May we ponder seriously on how we can live as the Saviour invited His disciples to live in the Sermon on the Mount. May we press forward faithfully, striving to live up to our privileges, living up to His expectations, living up to our divine potential. I humbly pray that we will invite the Spirit to help us to receive the personal revelation that we need to have in order to prosper in the midst of the challenges of mortality – that we may each blossom as a rose in our individual desert of life. May we be committed to our relationship with Him. May we remember that He delights to bless us. May we live in such a way that He can welcome us with those wonderful words in Matt 25 ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord’. That we may walk in the Abrahamic covenant and be seen sitting in the bosom of Abraham our father, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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