Category Archives: Adversity

Picking Up the Pace

I have to confess that I’m a closet drag racer.  If I’m the first car in line next to some guy at an intersection and can safely beat him through when the light turns green, I go for it. Friday afternoon, I drove four friends to see the new movie, Meet the Mormons (now in theaters). On the way home, a fellow from our congregation pulled up alongside me in a minivan. He did a great bobble head, nodding toward the light. Like red to a bull, I took the bait. I pulled ahead of him a little smugly until I realized he let me win. Who knew? A bobble head gentleman!

Sitting in church this morning, listening to both a departing and a returning missionary, I realized we are in a different kind of race – the race between those in God’s army and those promoting a life based on selfish pleasure and gain.

I thought about how the many amazing people around me are increasing their contributions to the human family: ministering to prison populations, serving the homeless, or taking their kids to do service in the Third World (see Two Roatans). I thought about how the spread of Christianity is accelerating worldwide, especially in third world countries, and how those converts beam as they describe finding God. Click HERE for numbers and HERE for some stories.

Many Christian churches are sending missionaries and humanitarian aid workers all over the world to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and help those in dire need. My own church has over 83,000 missionaries in 409 missions worldwide, plus 12,000 humanitarian aid workers in 182 countries, most paying their own way. There’s been an urgent call from our leaders to hasten both the missionary and family history work, helping our ancestors also receive saving ordinances.

But here in America, the opposite is too often true. Church attendance is declining and the numbers of nonbelievers is increasing, according to the Pew Research Institute. For a nation whose founding fathers were solidly Christian, we’ve departed far from their vision (see my post, Covenant America). Selfless idealism has yielded to the entitlement mentality. Morality has degenerated into Animal House. Church attendance, prayer in many public places, and a belief in a higher power are decidedly unpopular and even illegal. And the trend seems to be picking up speed.

Perhaps there’s a race that’s intensifying between the secular and the Christian world to see who can win the most converts. Scriptures have long foretold our day when the forces of evil and the forces of good would collide in the largest battle ever seen. This could be really scary except they also tell us the ending, and that the good guys win!

But it’ll be easier to ride out those struggles if we know what we believe and which race we’re running. Where do you stand, and how fast are you running?

Check out a great personal story:

The WWII Candy Bomber

The Candy Bomber in Germany, 1948 Courtesy Blog.Chron.Com/Mormon Voice

The Candy Bomber in Germany, 1948
Courtesy Blog.Chron.Com/Mormon Voice

 

The Tip of the Plow

I just finished a historical novel I absolutely loved, The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd (author of The Secret Life of Bees). She writes about real-life sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké from a slave-owning upper class family in Charlotte, North Carolina. They both detested slavery and were pioneers in both the Abolitionist and Women’s Movements in the early 1800’s. Ms Kidd writes an imagined inner life for Sarah and her personal slave Handful that is beautifully drawn and fairly faithful to the facts. Their passionate dedication required intense personal sacrifice but they never compromised their principles.

This story reminded me of a phrase voiced by a former real estate broker discussing levels of risk in property investment.  Land is riskiest and developers are at the tip of the plow. They must invest a huge amount of money, time, and vision before they earn a single dollar. One wrong decision and they could lose it all. Certainly Sarah and Angelina were at the tip of their plow in both movements, and suffered greatly in the process.

It’s a vivid image: I picture the pioneer plow biting into tough prairie sod and the stress on it, the abrasion of stones and roots wearing the blade down quickly. The people behind the plow had to be equally tough. Others also come to mind: explorers, inventors, entrepreneurs, saints and martyrs. But are we, more ordinary people, ever at the tip of the plow? I know I have been and I have the emotional scars to prove it!

In the 1990’s I bought into a condo complex, recently converted from an apartment building. 48 different homeowners took over an aging building, electing seven of us to the first Board of Directors. We faced arcing electricity in the utility room, defective boilers and roof, plus thousands of bats under that bad roof! We buckled down, got legal advice, and solved those problems one at a time, first winning a settlement from the developers. I was treasurer and legal liaison, so many, many nights my stomach would be in knots about how to make these people accountable, how to sell extra assessments to our fellow owners so we could replace the roof, and how to unseat a volatile HOA President.

After five years, we triumphed over all these difficulties. Those of us in the vanguard were worn out and others were elected to carry on. They only had to deal with issues like enforcing the rule on uniform window coverings, kids running in the halls, and which lawn care company to use. I don’t regret my experience as it gave me the confidence I needed to tackle real estate at age 59 when I needed a change from teaching learning-disabled teenagers.

I reflected many times on the early scouts and pioneers who conquered the tough Midwestern prairie, harsh weather, and unfriendly native Americans. They were followed by the settlers who came in and built it up, in relative security. My Kent ancestors were settlers, not pioneers, building up Davenport, Iowa; opening a drugstore in nearby DeWitt; or starting the Photographic Dept. at the University of Iowa. I hope they appreciated those who came before and plowed the ground for them.

Where in your life are you at the tip of the plow? I see valiant friends stand for principle in their families, integrity in their work, or courage in the face of horrible adversity. Perhaps that’s our frontier today, where our own plow blade bites into the heart of experience.

Plowing by Carl Larsson Courtesy WikiArt.org, in public domain

Plowing, by Carl Larsson
Courtesy WikiArt.org, in public domain