Filters

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the October 1980 Conference. 

I loved Elder H. Burke Peterson's talk "Purify Our Minds and Spirits." It reminded me of some other talks I've liked that use water as a metaphor for our lives. Elder Peterson talked about how, like flowing water, our spirits pick up impurities over time, and how we must filter out those impurities if we want to maintain spiritual strength.

This idea of purity and impurity resonated with me because I am often wishing that my motivations and desires were less "mixed" and more pure! I liked the idea that the bad parts of my motivations, the impurities or places where I don't really have an "eye single to the glory of God," can be systematically filtered out! Elder Peterson says:

First, there are large grates and nets of coarse screens that filter out leaves, branches, and dead animal life. The filtering system gets finer and finer as it removes other harmful impurities.

This part reminded me of something I'd heard somewhere, about how we often don't notice we are making progress in combatting sin, because as we conquer our bigger/more obvious sins, we start to be more aware of our smaller ones!

Throughout the talk, Elder Peterson gives a series of steps for performing this "filtering" process in our lives:

The secret to cleansing our spirit of whatever the impurity is not very complicated. It begins with prayer every morning and ends with prayer every night. This is the most important step I know in the cleansing process.… 

Secondly, an added refinement will come in the filtering process: [it] can be found in a daily study of the scriptures—not long, perhaps, but every day…

Third…refreshment to your spirit…comes when you do something good for another that he or she doesn’t expect. Keep it simple, but do it—daily.

I thought it was interesting that these are all daily things; you'd think it would take awhile for the water to become impure and maybe you wouldn't have to filter it until it got really bad. But obviously, if you think of drinking water, the filtration system is always in place. It has to catch the impurities constantly as the water runs by. And I like the idea that even when I don't feel much progress in the matters of purifying my heart and making my "eye single" to God—as long as my "filters" of prayer and scripture study and service are in place, I can be confident that I am indeed becoming more pure.


Other posts in this series:

• Accountable For Better Ministering by Jan Tolman