Prize the Sweet

Twas the week before Easter and all through the blog,
not a post had been written!  Elder Spendlove, you dog!

This week, 2000-some-odd years ago, marked the last week in the life of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  He must have known what was coming--His imminent suffering, betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection.  He surely anticipated that bitter end to His life of service, but faced it with bravery and love because He knew what that would mean for the rest of us, His brothers and sisters--freedom.  Freedom from death, from hell, from being barred from the presence of our Heavenly Father.  And He did it all for us.

How sweet that truly is.  I am grateful that my Lord and Savior suffered the bitter so I could know the sweet.  Of course life is hard and of course I make mistakes.  But when I truly repent and follow Him, looking for His peace and His strength in my life, I am blessed.  I can overcome.  I can face the trials of the day-to-day with serenity and faith, knowing that He overcame the world.

With the weight of His responsibility crushing down on Him that last week, He did not seek to comfort Himself.  As He had ever done, He turned outside Himself and gave these beautiful words of comfort to the hearts of His Twelve Apostles:

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.  (John 14:27)

I love Him.  I love the peace He has left me.  Whenever I am afraid or alone, whenever I am uncertain or can't seem to figure things out, I know I can rely on that promise of peace.  My bitterness is replaced with inexplicable joy--"the peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (Philippians 4:7).  One young man long ago who had experienced the pains of sin described his conversion, his rescue by Jesus Christ like this to his son:

Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy.

Jesus is the fountain of sweet, pure, living water.  And this weekend we commemorate His triumph over the bitter.  If you have anything bitter in your life you want removed, I invite you to pray, study Christ's words, repent, and be baptized by someone who has Christ's permission to do so.  Those bitter tastes can be replaced with the sweetness of redemption through Jesus Christ.  I know they can.

Much Love,

Elder Spendlove

Minesweeper

"Great.  We've come this far and now we're stuck," spat Jonesie.  It had happened--we'd gotten through the jungle only to find ourselves in front of what was obviously a minefield.  It wasn't very wide across, but it we'd seen the telltale signs enough to know that it would be less-than-smart to traipse across the stretch of dirt in front of us--I could even see some of the treacherous green devices on the ground ahead of me.  Despair was as thick as the humidity as we set our packs down and drank for a minute from our canteens.  I looked around the group--a ragtag platoon out here in the hellish nightmare of Vietnam, stuck between impending Vietcong action on the other side of the jungle and a treacherous minefield in front of us.  Talk about a rock and a hard place!  It was me--Spendlove--, Jonesie, Smitty, Burt, and Cap'n (Captian Scott Buckman); we'd lost the other half of our little band in the jungle and to enemy gunfire.  We were dirty, sore, almost out of ammo, and doing our best to not lose hope. 

I thought of home, my mother and father, my brothers and sister, my friends, the folks in our town who frequented our family store where I'd swept and stocked shelves and counted change before I was drafted.  It all seemed so far away.  I had gotten over the tears long ago, but I couldn't help wondering, once again, if I'd ever see those faces again.  I leaned up against a tree and sighed heavily as Jonesie got up and began to pace.

"What're we gonna do?  I mean, it's not like we have any metal detectors or anything!"  He was right.  It's not like we were equipped to make it through unharmed.