As children we see the world as a place of magic, anything and everything is possible! I believed that I could be anything, I believed that I could do anything, and I believed that I could accomplish anything. Dragons and far off kingdoms were only an imagination away. However as we grow we become jaded by disappointments that come, and our eye for magic begins to diminish and a heart of skepticism replaces it. Why can't the joy from the simple things remain in our hearts? I would say that with that joy of pure simplicity coupled with imagination great expectations would follow, and as those expectations aren't met, our heart becomes closed off and we expect less and less from life.
What would it be like if God was like that with us? If every mistake we made God just thought "well, you messed up, I guess you can't meet the expectations that I had for you, let's lower those expectations just a bit" We would never reach our eternal potential because we would never have someone there to help us make it! But God doesn't react that way, he knows the potential we can reach, and every time we disappoint him he reaches out with an outpouring of love and comfort and a request for us to repent and make a concerted effort to keep the commandments. He knows that therein lies the key to success and the fulfillment of our dreams. So why would we react that way? if God keeps his expectations for us set high, why ever would we lower them for ourselves?
The Lion King: A story of Great Expectations
Simba, as we all know, is a lion, born of a king, who learns from his father that he has a royal inheritance. Anything that the light touches is the land that he will inherit. Woah... that's a pretty big inheritance. In the bible the apostle Paul writes to the Romans of the heirship we, as children of our Father in heaven, hold. "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." (Romans 8:17) Even Christ has said "2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." (John 14:2) So if we are joint-heirs with Christ, and our Father in Heaven has many mansions, we have a large inheritance, but we must first answer the call to "be ye therefore perfect as my Father in heaven who is perfect" (Matthew 5:48)
Simba has a large shoes to fill as well, and he begins to learn how to fill them, but unbeknownst to Simba, his uncle is forming a nefarious plot to overthrow the throne. Simba is trying to only please his father, but a mistake is made and tragedy is the result. Then happens one of the most tear jerking scenes in all of Disney movie history and Simba is left on his own, he runs away, and he desires to never look back.
Think if you will of a time in your life where you were disappointed, hurt, and let down and you wished to never look back, but the pain of loss or regret still dwindled in your heart? With this, were your expectations lowered for yourself, for your future, for who you desired to be? I'm sure they were for Simba as well, (I understand he is a fictional character but bear with me here) he felt that it was his fault his Father had died, and he had no desire to reach the expectations that his Father held for him because he felt as if he couldn't reach them, therefore he forsook his royal inheritance for the wilderness.
But further on in life, Simba is told "remember who you are" reminding him that he does have a royal inheritance, and that so many are looking to him to make a difference. Simba had Great Expectations!
"Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it" - Rafiki
In the end Simba changes, he again seeks the path that will lead to happiness, he is reunited with his mother and family, and he reaches his potential and brings about peace in the land.
Our Royal Inheritance:
"As we journey through mortality, let us remember from whence we came;
let us be true to the trust vested in us. Let us remember who we are and
what God expects us to become." - Thomas S. Monson
We must understand that we are, like I said previously, Joint-Heirs with Christ. We once lived with our Heavenly Father in the premortal existance, and while we cannot remember all of our life before this one, but one thing we cannot forget is who we are and who we can become. The commandment to become perfect is not an easy one, but with the help of our savior and the atonement we can loose the pain of the past and look forward to the future with hope, always focusing on who our father in heaven sees we can become!
Faith
Repentance
Baptism
Recieving the Gift of the Holy Ghost
Enduring to the End
These are the steps that MUST be taken, to again live with our Father in Heaven.
Never loose hope, God knows who you can become, it is in your hands to become it!
No comments:
Post a Comment