One lower light shining

In less than 24 hours, I will be leaving Provo…permanently.  I graduate in April, but I’ll be spending winter semester in DC for the Washington Seminar, so when I leave town tomorrow morning for winter break, I won’t be coming back.

It feels so weird to be leaving.

This past week, when I wasn’t taking exams, grading exams/papers, packing, cleaning, shipping / giving away my books, I spent a lot of time reflecting.  Only a year ago, the thought of graduating and entering the “real world” terrified me.  I didn’t want college life to end.  Now, I have the complete opposite view.  Even though I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do after I graduate, I’m more than ready to get out and experience the “real world.”

I’ve also been reflecting a lot on how much I’ve changed in the past four years.  I don’t know how it happened, but I feel like I’m completely different from the person I was when I first came to BYU.  It’s hard to quantify what I mean by that, but I think I’m a lot more mature, a lot more diplomatic and understanding, than I was when I first started college.  If I were to go back in time and hang out with my past self, I’d probably find him so irritating and self-absorbed that I probably wouldn’t enjoy his company very much.  And I used to think I was mature back then!

I’ve been thinking about how God looks at us, with His unlimited perspective.  We must seem so completely immature from where He sees us–so self-centered, so callous and uncaring, so petty and blind.  To God, even the world’s most powerful, influential, and respected people must seem like little children, childishly throwing sand into the other children’s eyes and throwing a temper tantrum when others do the same to them.

If we, as imperfect, mortal beings, were granted God’s omniscience, would it drive us to hate our fellow men?  To see everyone’s imperfections in perfect clarity, and be privy to all their evil thoughts?  How could we possibly love each other when we know such things?  When absolutely nothing is hidden, and we can see just how depraved, perverse, and fallen we all are?

And yet God still loves us.  He loves all of us–enough to suffer and die that we might have a chance to live with Him in glory forever.  Even the pedophiles, the murderers, the tyrants and rapists and terrorists–even the people in our lives who we consider our very worst enemies–He loves them all, despite the fact that He fully knows the depths of their evil.  That is a miracle.

I am convinced that maturity is a function of one’s capacity to love.  The more we love others, the more we listen to and care about them.  The greater our capacity to love, the more willing we are to seek out and understand others, even those with beliefs and values completely different from our own.  The greater our capacity to love, the more likely we are to turn the other cheek and forgive those who hurt us–to reconcile with others and stop the cycle of provocation and violence.

I’m going to be interning with a major think tank in Washington DC, one that has a lot of influence on US foreign policy in the Middle East.  Few parts of the world have seen more conflict, violence, and hatred; few parts of the world have a greater need for reconciliation and forgiveness.  I’m under no illusion concerning my own imperfections, but as I pursue career opportunities in this field, I hope that I can bring a degree of maturity that will allow me to work to build bridges, dispel ignorance, and bring peace to God’s children.

I have no idea what will happen in my internship, or what I will do after I graduate, but I’m confident that as I seek to do God’s will and serve my fellow men, He will continue to pour out His blessings in my life, and everything will fall into place in the best possible way.  That has been my experience in the past, and I have no reason to doubt it now.

Here’s a thought I had while reading Nephi’s version of Lehi’s dream.

1 Nephi 11:25:

25 And it came to pass that I beheld that the rod of iron, which my father had seen, was the word of God, which led to the fountain of living waters, or to the tree of life; which waters are a representation of the love of God; and I also beheld that the tree of life was a representation of the love of God.

The prevalent view in our contemporary culture seems to be that churches and organized religions are dark, stodgy, impersonal, puritanical, and hypocritical. Our modern culture also portrays religious, church-going individuals as self-righteous, power-hungry, hyper-critical, anti-social, and closed-minded. This is the sense I get from the way the mass media portrays religious life.

Not according to Nephi and Lehi’s vision of the tree of life, however. According to that vision, true religion leads to the deepest, purest, and most fulfilling love that any of us can find. The rod of iron, a representation of the word of God as found in His church, leads us to the fruit of the tree of life, which “fills [our] souls with exceedingly great joy” (1 Nephi 8:12).

In other words, through religion–true religion–we become a loving, gentle, kind, patient, merciful, accepting, listening, and optimistic people. None of this stodgy, puritanical stereotype that our culture sometimes projects upon us. Through Christ’s church–his true church–we are filled with the “love of God and of all men” (2 Nephi 31:20).