Remember in our last ward? When we had to teach our first Sunday School lesson?
(How could you forget that overload of too much information, right?)
Well, guess what our new calling in the ward is?!
You guessed it-Gospel Doctrine teachers again. (actually we've had this calling for a few months, I'm just catching up)
But thankfully it has been exponentially better than that first time. There's three other teachers so we don't have to teach as often and I am decidedly less nervous...and sweaty. Which is awesome.
We actually had to teach yesterday and it was one lesson that I felt like just went really well.
We didn't prepare our lesson until Saturday night (of course) but when we got up Sunday morning and quickly went through it again, it just really clicked and we got some good ideas that really worked well.
The lesson was titled "God is Love" and was all about how Heavenly Father shows his love for us, how Christ shows his love for us, and how we show our love for them.
We split up the lesson so I taught that part about Heavenly Father's love for us and Kolton taught the other two parts (lucky, I know).
We started off talking about how Heavenly Father allows us to repent and be baptized and communicates with us through prayer and has given us the gift of the Spirit to guide us, and how all these things are ways that he shows His love for us.
So on Sunday morning while previewing the lesson, I remembered this talk by Hugh B. Brown called "God is the Gardner" that Kolton and I had listened to a long time ago. I thought that this talk would be good to listen to and would be a much-needed break for the class members from my nonsensical ramblings. As I was planning around this talk I thought it would be great to talk about how Heavenly Father really does direct our lives, which is another way he shows His love for us.
So we went to church and got in the room to teach the lesson. I did ramble incessantly and we did listen to the talk as we had planned. I've included the text because it's just that good. Definitely not a good as hearing the actual talk, but the text will do. It's a little long, but definitely worth the read.
I was living up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet high. It was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears and went after it, and I cut it down, and pruned it, and clipped it back until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. It was just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was crying. I was kind of simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over it), and I looked at it, and smiled, and said, “What are you crying about?” You know, I thought I heard that currant bush talk. And I thought I heard it say this: “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me, because I didn’t make what I should have made. How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.” That’s what I thought I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered. I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and some day, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down, for caring enough about me to hurt me. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’ ”
Time passed. Years passed, and I found myself in England. I was in command of a cavalry unit in the Canadian Army. I had made rather rapid progress as far as promotions are concerned, and I held the rank of field officer in the British Canadian Army. And I was proud of my position. And there was an opportunity for me to become a general. I had taken all the examinations. I had the seniority. There was just one man between me and that which for ten years I had hoped to get, the office of general in the British Army. I swelled up with pride. And this one man became a casualty, and I received a telegram from London. It said: “Be in my office tomorrow morning at 10:00,” signed by General Turner in charge of all Canadian forces. I called in my valet, my personal servant. I told him to polish my buttons, to brush my hat and my boots, and to make me look like a general because that is what I was going to be. He did the best he could with what he had to work on, and I went up to London. I walked smartly into the office of the General, and I saluted him smartly, and he gave me the same kind of a salute a senior officer usually gives—a sort of “Get out of the way, worm!” He said, “Sit down, Brown.” Then he said, “I’m sorry I cannot make the appointment. You are entitled to it. You have passed all the examinations. You have the seniority. You’ve been a good officer, but I can’t make the appointment. You are to return to Canada and become a training officer and a transport officer. Someone else will be made a general.” That for which I had been hoping and praying for ten years suddenly slipped out of my fingers.
Then he went into the other room to answer the telephone, and I took a soldier’s privilege of looking on his desk. I saw my personal history sheet. Right across the bottom of it in bold, block-type letters was written, “THIS MAN IS A MORMON.” We were not very well liked in those days. When I saw that, I knew why I had not been appointed. I already held the highest rank of any Mormon in the British Army. He came back and said, “That’s all, Brown.” I saluted him again, but not quite as smartly. I saluted out of duty and went out. I got on the train and started back to my town, 120 miles away, with a broken heart, with bitterness in my soul. And every click of the wheels on the rails seemed to say, “You are a failure. You will be called a coward when you get home. You raised all those Mormon boys to join the army, then you sneak off home.” I knew what I was going to get, and when I got to my tent, I was so bitter that I threw my cap and my saddle brown belt on the cot. I clinched my fists and I shook them at heaven. I said, “How could you do this to me, God? I have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I could have done—that I should have done—that I haven’t done. How could you do this to me?” I was as bitter as gall.
And then I heard a voice, and I recognized the tone of this voice. It was my own voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to do.” The bitterness went out of my soul, and I fell on my knees by the cot to ask forgiveness for my ungratefulness and my bitterness. I arose from my knees a humble man. And now, almost fifty years later, I look up to him and say, “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.” I see now that it was wise that I should not become a general at that time, because if I had I would have been senior officer of all western Canada, with a lifelong, handsome salary, a place to live, and a pension when I’m no good any longer, but I would have raised my six daughters and two sons in army barracks. They would no doubt have married out of the Church, and I think I would not have amounted to anything. I haven’t amounted to very much as it is, but I have done better than I would have done if the Lord had let me go the way I wanted to go.
It's good huh?
So towards the end of the talk, Kolton leaned over to me and asked if I wanted him to wrap up my section, including the talk, and get started on his sections (as if he wasn't already doing over his amount of work). But I looked over at him and said, "No, I think I'd better do it."
Because all during this talk little thoughts had been coming to me that were in a totally different direction than I had planned.
Just so you know, this has never happened to me before. But as I sat there I realized I could tie the principles in this talk to something even greater than I had planned, Something greater that really needed said. It was like little storm clouds were gathering-the good kind-and pretty soon I had my concluding comments all laid out for me. I knew exactly what I needed to say.
So I stood up and talked about how it's easy to see our Heavenly Father's love for us when we think about how He answers our prayers, and allows us to repent, and gives us the Holy Ghost to guide us. But sometimes, and we don't really ever want to think about these times, He shows His love for us by sending us trials and hard things, and just really unpleasant stuff.
And sometimes we just want to ask (or sometimes we do ask) what in the world is the gardener thinking? How could he do this to me? I've done all He's asked of me, why is He making life so hard?
I definitely don't know the answers to those questions, but I do know that He ultimately knows what is best for us. He knows what we need ten trillion times better than we could ever know. He knows where we need to end up and how exactly we are going to get there.
It doesn't always make sense, most of the time it never does, but if we will just put our trust in Him, we can realize that it will all work out. Not today, not tomorrow, and probably not ever in our lifetime, but someday it will all make sense and we'll see what He had in mind for us all along and how He loved us enough to cut us down so we could reach our full potential.
After I'd finished saying all this, I sat down and was just drained. The room was so still and I knew that what I'd said was exactly what I'd needed to say. And then I realized how much help I'd gotten in saying my piece. There is no way I could be that eloquent on my own. I had definitely been guided to say what I had, for I don't know what reason. Probably just to help myself.
It really was an experience that has never happened to me before and that I never want to forget.
