Short Story: Plan of Salvation
One word: It’s Jesus.
Written by April T Giauque
Imagine a day when you wake up to the alarm, you push snooze, and you sleep through the next two. You wake up frantic because it dawns on you that today is Monday, you haven’t finished your lesson plan, and your four school-age kids are still asleep. You left the food for the month’s worth of cooking lessons for your special education students at the house and are not at the school, and you have two IEPs that afternoon. You pop up and start the race already behind.
In your race to get ready, you skip the shower, throw on something clean, and pull your hair up in a tight bun. Then you run out of the bedroom, stub your toe, blame the wall for being there, and run upstairs to wake the kids before their bus comes to grab them.
You look around the room and notice the girls' shoes are outside; it’s been raining all night! You are successful in getting them up and you glance at the clock. You are signing to them to find other shoes and blaming them for leaving their shoes outside. Their faces go from wake up to let down.
You have 6 minutes before they have to leave, and you have to go. You still need to get all the food in the van, brush your teeth, and wake up the other two boys. You get it done in about four minutes, then race toward the bedrooms again, and your daughter has no socks on, and her hair is out of control. You tug the hair into a ponytail as she winces. She is not in a great mood. But you have to go, so give a quick 30-second payer and a 3-second hug.
You race to the boys' room, tell them to wear clean socks, and listen to the prayer. You offer it in less than 10 seconds, and your one son says, “Mom, I just need a hug…” You give him a three-second hug and a quick kiss on the head. He says, “Thanks,” but he is a little heartbroken. You promise to talk to him after work and remind him not to be late, and then you race out the door.
PLAN of SALVATION
Let’s back up….are we talking about the Plan of Salvation? What does this crazy, frantic morning have anything to do with that plan? Well, you can annalize for yourself all my shortcomings in that scene. You can criticize and judge that shoes, socks, and hair brushed should have been checked the night before, and the food should have been at the school. Oh yes, I should have just gotten up with the first alarm and not slept through it.
If I had considered Jesus, I would still be in a race to get things done, but I would have made better choices about how I loved and treated my children.
You can see that I became the frantic monster tearing through the house, leaving kids with hurt hearts before sending them out the door. Who needs the plan of Salvation? That’s right, me. Guess what? Heavenly Father saw this morning, and billions like it, and knew we would all need Jesus.
Just Jesus?
Kay, now hang on a minute. That is far too simple. The whole plan of salvation is “Just Jesus?” So Maybe I’m slow to the party, but yes, it is that simple. Heavenly Father knew that we would all be broken and need help…and that is through Jesus.
Your situation differs from mine, but we all have felt less than worthy, sinful, and broken, and God knows it. He built his ENTIRE plan of SALVATION on the fact that we would mess up.
I have been studying the General Conference talks since October, and Elder Hirst’s “God’s Favourite” talk stood out to me today. Heavenly Father knows we are eternally flawed, so he sent Jesus. That is why we have the Savior!
His entire plan is built upon the fact that He knows we will mess up, so he prepared the plan with a Savior “built in.” Elder Hirst said, “You are never too broken for Him. There is much for us to do in this life, but self-loathing and shameful self-condemnation are not on that list. However misshapen we might feel, His arms are not shortened. No. They are always long enough to “[reach our] reaching” and embrace each one of us.”
This is the crucial part of the Plan of Salvation. When we don’t feel the warmth of divine love, it hasn’t gone away. God’s own words are that “the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but [His] kindness shall not depart from [us].” I love what Elder Hirst said next. “So, just to be clear, the idea that God has stopped loving should be so far down the list of possible explanations in life that we don’t get to it until after the mountains have left and the hills are gone!”
God Never Leaves Us
God Never Leaves Us. So, if God’s love does not leave us, why don’t we always feel it? Elder Hirst says, “Just to manage your expectations: I don’t know. But being loved is not the same as feeling loved, and There might be an intrusion into your ability to feel God’s love for you. If so, these things can dull or suspend our ability to feel as we might otherwise feel. Perhaps you will not be able to feel His love for a season at least, and knowledge will have to suffice.” That is when Satan tries to fill us with doubt and fear. Fight it! Jesus is there. Stay!
Elder Hirst's voice pleads when we might be in doubt, uncertainty, or sin. We just have to act on faith and wait it out. We have to look at the facts of God’s love for us, even if we can’t feel it at that moment. We need to get a bigger perspective and “see the forest for the trees” or get a 30,000-foot view of the situation.
Elder Hirst says, “Can you take a step back from whatever is in front of you and maybe another step and another until you see a wider landscape, wider and wider still if necessary, until you are literally ‘thinking celestial’ because you are looking at the stars and remembering worlds without number and through them their Creator?”
God's Love is Joy!
When You Feel God’s Love—Joy! Elder Hirst says, “When you are filled with love, whenever it is in this life, “please try and hold on to it as effectively as a sieve holds water. Splash it everywhere you go.”
Think about that love splashing around your family, spouse, friends, co-workers, fellow church members, and strangers you interact with. I could have done that with my kids on a frantic day, but I don’t stay in the darkness and beat myself up the way Satan wants me to; I get up and do better the next time, whether that is the next hour or the next day. Elder Hirst says, “Let’s douse them with that love because it fills you with that Joy—His Joy!”
The Plan of Salvation is Jesus. Jesus can help us with the everyday junk of life and the really hard stuff, too. There is joy in being with Jesus and daily repenting so we can have Him guide us. Jesus is Joy! Elder Hirst says, “The joy of the gospel is available to all: not just the happy, not just the downcast. Joy is our purpose, not the gift of our circumstances. We have every reason to ‘rejoice and be filled with love towards God and all men.’ Let’s get full.”
I agree! Let’s fill up on Jesus.
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