I spoke at church on Sunday. I think it was a good talk. I’ll add it to my letter if anyone wants to read it. The weather is nice here. It is 80 degrees so that had been a lot warmer. I’m happy to be here and serving the Lord. I just need a little more sleep. 😊 Have a great week! Congratulations on your graduation Elly!
Here is my talk...
I've spent a lot of time thinking and praying over what this talk should be centered around. To explain what it is about I need everyone to follow me as I explain a creative reality. As we start in this reality we have a master. A loving master who wants us to become masters of the color green. He wants us to live, breath, and love the color green. He could do three things to get us to live and embrass green. He could drop us into a world of green. Every building, tree, flower animal, EVERYTHING would be green. BUT if he took this route if all we know is green, nothing is green. Everything is just the way it is and we would never appreciate it if we didn't know other colors. Second option, he could explain to us that this color we are experiencing is green. He could sit us down point to the color green and tell us this is green. G R E E N-green. Yet this is how we teach primary kids and he wants us to love and embrace green on a deeper and more full level. The third option I propose is a unique option. The master could drop us into a world of BLUE. Everything in this world would be blue, and we would Love blue. It's cool and serene. We would love to be in blue. Until one day our master would pick us out of the blue world and toss us into a world of YELLOW. in this world everything is warm and new and exciting. We've never experienced yellow before so we could choose to be one of three people. We could LOVE YELLOW. We could want to ditch blue forever and stay in yellow. Second we could LOVE BLUE. We could want to leave yellow and go back to the old world of blue. But THIRD we could choose to think "what if there is something more?". What if we mesh these two colors and love in both and become MASTERS OF GREEN! Through this process of fully seeing and living through the making of the color green we would learn to appreciate and love green. We would truly become masters of green. I'll pray that made sense to you.
Now what in the world does that have to do with you? Let's find out. I'll use a personal life story to help illustrate this point. "I grew up in a little town in Idaho called Driggs. Its population was less then a thousand. Here life to me seemed perfect. I met some of my closest friends and had so much fun.(pause). This was my world of blue. It seemed cool and calm. Here in this world I met my best friend Austin. We played baseball and video games together. Life was good. While living in this world of blue he left for the air force and I moved to Vegas. We talked and called and visited each other. (pause) Until one day I learned my best friend had died. Due to health issues not seen he passed away unexpectedly one night. My world of blue that I loved was stripped from me and I was somewhere I had never been before. (pause) I was in a world of yellow. That calm and cool world of happiness was gone and I was stuck in a world of sadness and sorrow. Oh I desperately wanted to go back to blue. Through the next couple of weeks I was miserable in my world of yellow. While in this world of yellow we traveled to Austin's funeral in Oklahoma where his family lived at the time. Our first night in Oklahoma we went to visit Austin's parents at there home. As we walked into there house which should have been a place of sorrow and sadness, I felt something I had never felt before. (PAUSE) GREEN. Where complete and utter anguish should have been I felt peace. For the first time in my life I experienced green. Green was peaceful, hopeful, and full of love. As the days went on I started to understand what made me feel and see the color green. I learned that blue and yellow are necessary. We looked back to old pictures of Austin and those blue memories came flooding back, I felt that serene, and cool world, but at other moments I felt yellow. I saw my friend buried and given a twenty gun salute and felt that sorrow and anguish, but it is when both can be seen and felt that we become masters of green. It is when I believed that I could see him again and that hope of blue mixed with the understanding and compassion and hardship that came with experiencing yellow I was able to see through my saviors eyes and start on my journey to become a master of green as he is." Today for my talk I would like to help each one of us become closer to becoming masters of green.
I will talk about three ways I believe we can mesh these two colors. They are learning to laugh, pray and putting our life into perspective. First is learning to laugh. When hard things are in front of us and and it seems we will fall into the world of yellow which is a world of discontent, we can find green by learning to laugh. Elder Wirthlin shares a story about this he says "I remember when one of our daughters went on a blind date. She was all dressed up and waiting for her date to arrive when the doorbell rang. In walked a man who seemed a little old, but she tried to be polite. She introduced him to me and my wife and the other children; then she put on her coat and went out the door. We watched as she got into the car, but the car didn’t move. Eventually our daughter got out of the car and, red faced, ran back into the house. The man that she thought was her blind date had actually come to pick up another of our daughters who had agreed to be a babysitter for him and his wife. We all had a good laugh over that. In fact, we couldn’t stop laughing. Later, when our daughter’s real blind date showed up, I couldn’t come out to meet him because I was still in the kitchen laughing. Now, I realize that our daughter could have felt humiliated and embarrassed. But she laughed with us, and as a result, we still laugh about it today. The next time you’re tempted to groan, you might try to laugh instead. It will extend your life and make the lives of all those around you more enjoyable. " Let us each look for laughter and as Luke writes" blessed are ye that weep; for you shall find laughter".
Second is prayer. Communicating with our father in heaven is one way we can see green in a world of blue or yellow. Understanding his great destiny for us and why these things happen to us. As we pray we pray to align our will with our fathers and in doing so yoke us to our Supreme creator who truly is a master of green. To truly become a master of green and include prayer in that process we must not just pray with our lips but our hearts. Sometimes we imagine God more mortal then we realize. We may think if we fail to be obedient or fall short on our covenants he will close his ear and blessings to us. That is just not true. No matter what state of emergency or trial or heartache he will hear and help. He is a loving father who loves us more then we can imagine. As we reach out to him in prayer he will reach out for us and lift our eyes to a new perspective, GREEN.
Third is to put our life in perspective. We hear kids say "when will we get there dad?", and how much longer will it take?", but us adults ask similar questions." when will I arrive?", do you think it's when you retire? When you get the new car? When the kid is born? Or you move? No! It is hear and now. Each one of us can find joy and fulfillment NOW! A quote I love is this" I wish we could now we were in the good old days before we have to leave them". We only have one shot of mortality! Here and now! I remember a story and it goes like this "there was a grandmother who had been widowed early in her life and was moving out of her home. Her granddaughter, about to be married herself, was carefully helping her pack the boxes of dishes and the faded towels. "See that sewing machine over there in the corner?" the grandmother asked. "Your grandfather always left his hat there when he came home in the evening. I used to scold him all the time about it. ‘Just put your hat on the hook,’ I’d say. ‘Why does your hat always have to be on the sewing machine messing everything up?’ Then one day he got pneumonia and died, leaving four little children and me to miss him for a lifetime. How many times through the years I’ve thought, What I’d give to see that hat on the sewing machine, placed there by his own hand!" let each of us put our life into perceptive and recognse the blessings that we have. By doing so our minds will shift to a shade of green.
James 5:11 says "behold we can count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of job, and have seen the end of the lord. That the lord is pitiful and of tender mercy." we can be counted as happy as we endure hard things and look to change our perspective to a master of green. Our savior will lift us higher and open our eyes to new and marvelous things as we focus on him and his plan. He is our savior and redeemer. Our brother and friend. I say these things in his name, even Jesus Christ, amen.
Have a great week!
Elder Davis
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