Come and See

My wife recently returned home from an extended weekend in Salt Lake and brought back with her a packet prepared by the Relief Society designed to be used as a study guide over 40 days. The theme of the packet is "A Journey with Christ" and it guides the reader basically through the New Testament. We decided to go through this as a couple and we had our first session tonight.

In it, there's a talk from Ezra Taft Benson with this rather profound quote:

"We are meeting the adversary every day. The challenges of this ear will rival any of the past, and these challenges will increase both spiritually and temporally. We must be close to Christ, we must daily take His name upon us, always remember Him, and keep His commandments."

When I read the word "challenges", my radar picked up because for me that word has some depth. Let me explain. If you didn't know, I currently work in the software industry, and one of the constant themes as I talk with my colleagues at work is the need to seek new "challenges" and opportunities to grow. We want interesting "problems" to solve. Engineering is fundamentally a career where you seek out problems and find new cool and exciting ways to solve them. We want to solve puzzles essentially, we want to get better, we want to hone our craft.

So, when I see the word challenge, it triggers something positive in me where others might see a negative. I feel compelled to offer an alternative interpretation of this passage different from the more common default one.

In so many ways, the world has shifted drastically. It used to be that we could be content finding a factory job working with the same company for thirty years, retire with a pension and be taking care of all of our lives. Most of the time, these jobs were somewhat deadend, with few opportunities to really grow, but we had security. That world, for many reasons is gone.

Instead, we have many, many more opportunities. For a programmer in between jobs, they can now bid for work over the intenert. Not to mention the many, many businesses being run out of someone's home using ebay, amazon, or etsy.

I'm not saying any of this is easy. It's a harder world, it requires a certain amount of fearlessness and engagement that they don't teach you in school. But it's also a more exciting world, a more empowering world, and yes, a more challenging world.

I love Seth Godin's blog because in it, he acts like a cheerleader encouraging you to embrace this new reality.

Monday, April 25, 2011

St. John's Chapter 9

We were reading this chapter in the New Testament last night, but it was what was happening in my home right before reading this chapter, that made these passages extra profound and beautiful. I was in a grumpy mood. Our pretty expensive camera has been lost now for a couple of weeks now. The last time we had seen it, our two year old was walking down the hall with the camera in her hand. My iPod was also missing. It was the end of the day. Our house already has a baseline of too much clutter, but we tend to oscillate around the baseline quite widely. This night was no exception. I was barking orders grumpily at my kids trying to get them to pick up their mess, while I kept looking for both the iPod and the camera.

Low and behold, I found both under our bed. Still grumpy, but a little less so, we basically picked up most of the stuff. My wife was now in a bad mood, taking my frustrations at our mess very personally - not totally realizing that I am much more responsible for our mess than she is. Anyway, I embarked on our family scripture reading, St. John Chapter 9. I decided at random, to inject our problem right into the scriptures to see what would happen, and guess what?

"1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a family which was messy from the beggining.
2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this family or their parents, who failed to teach them how to keep house?
3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this family sinned, nor their parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in them.
4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
6 When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the house of this family with the clay,
7 and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Silo'am, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
8 The neighbors therefore, and they which before had seen him that they were a complete mess, said, Is not this he that lived in squalor?
9 Some said, This is them: others said,they look like them, but they said, we are they.
10 Therefore said they unto them, How was thou house cleaned?
11 They answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed our house, and said unto us, Go to the thy house and wash and we washed, and we knew how to keep our house clean and organized.
"

This resonated with me because we are all born with struggles and weaknesses - not because we're bad or sinful. It's just because we are human. And the way to achieve growth is through our faith, and through that faith, our weaknesses can be removed, not because of anything we do, but "so the works of God can be made manifest".

I'm wondering how many of us are taking advantage of these sorts of gifts. We all have blind spots. We can also be healed.