This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the April 2008 Conference.
I feel like I have talked about feeling God's love a lot lately. I guess it's been on my mind, so I'm seeing references to it everywhere! I remember Elder Uchtdorf's talk from this session well—it's one of his more well-known ones, I think, called "A Matter of a Few Degrees." And even though I love the main point of this talk, this time through I was most interested in this little side note:
Commandments and priesthood covenants provide a test of faith, obedience, and love for God and Jesus Christ, but even more importantly, they offer an opportunity to experience love from God and to receive a full measure of joy both in this life and in the life to come.
That's so interesting to me. It reminds me of the recent Robert M. Daines talk about our church callings being a way to "stand in the river of God's love." It's just such a different way to think about covenants. Rather than obligations, they are chances to feel more love. So when we're feeling sad and guilty and unloved because of whatever things we're doing badly at the moment (sins we're committing, even)—could the simply remedy be to find a commandment and try to keep it better? Any commandment? One of the times in my life I've felt most discouraged and hopeless was when I knew I was "actively sinning," but I didn't really feel like I could easily correct or leave behind that sin. I felt that God must be so disappointed in me, even if He still "loved" me in some abstract way. I imagined that He was listening to my prayers with exasperation or feelings of "get your act together, Marilyn, and then come back and maybe I'll listen and send love and guidance."
I see now that this assumption was "blocking" in my own heart the ability to detect the love that Heavenly Father was still actively feeling for me (because He always does). I wonder now if it would have helped to just do something good, even if I couldn't bring myself to do "the big thing." In fact, I think that actually is what I did do, without knowing it. I just kept doing small good things. I kept praying (without tons of hope, but I did it). I kept serving my kids. I kept obeying my priesthood leaders. I kept trying not to criticize them even in my own head. And eventually, I felt God's love again. Not that I felt I'd "earned" it by those small acts of covenant obedience; that never crossed my mind—but in some way maybe it was those very efforts that gave me more confidence and helped open up my heart to feel God's love again!
That same 2023 talk about the river of God's love has this interesting sentence:
Covenants are the shape of God’s embrace.
And I think that's what Elder Uchtdorf means here too. Covenants allow us to experience God's love by bringing it into our own lives. Covenants help us obey. They help us serve. They help us sacrifice. And all of those things are the exact things that open the floodgates so we can feel God's love. Maybe not immediately or on command—I know many people, myself included, have times when they struggle to feel it. But I love the idea of reacting to those times not with hopelessness, but by saying to myself, "Okay, I feel like God doesn't love me. So what covenant can I keep better so I can experience His love again?" It's not about me doing something so He'll "reward" me with love—but about me opening a covenant door that will let His already-abundant love flow into my heart.
No comments