Those of us in the Northwest get the benefit of some very beautiful days, and yesterday was one of them. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun reflected off the crystals in the 10 degree weather. My wife (Becca), my friend Jeremy, and I decided we would go skiing and it was a good decision!
Becca hadn’t been skiing before so the first part of the day Jeremy hit some runs on his own as I stayed with Becca and helped her out. She was great! I was very impressed at how well she picked it up and that even though she was a little nervous, she stuck with it. I’d given her instructions to keep her skis in a “pizza wedge”, slowly turn back and forth down the hill, and if she felt out of control to push on the ski facing down-hill and that she would stop. While I watched her I noticed that if she stayed focused on the instructions she did great! However if a skier, snow-boarder, or a tree would come into view she had the tendency at first to loose concentration and focus on the other object. Pretty soon she would head straight for the object and she would freak out a little and fall down. However, by the end of the day she had learned to steadily make it down the mountain and avoid the obstacles. I was very impressed with how well she’d done at learning.
As I watched her, I thought of how this relates to our relationship with God. God has given us instructions and a way to make it down this mountain of life and back to Him. Sometimes there are obstacles such as sickness, death, loss of a job…and a million other things throughout any given day that we can focus on and many times we fall. Luckily for us, we have instructions through the scriptures. The following scripture shows us how we can “make it down the mountain.”
“Look unto me, and endure to the end, and ye shall live; for unto him that endureth to the end will I give eternal life.” (3 Ne. 15:9.) There are many other scriptures in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants that refer to this promise as well. You can visit them here.
I would like to hear some experiences and thoughts from you…
How do you “look unto the Savior”?
What is “enduring to the end”? (for some good clues click here.)
What are ways you’ve used to endure?
Grace for Grace 
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January 24, 2008 at 6:16 am
Becca
I would have to say that my thoughts while flying down the mountain on my first day on skis were not quite on the spiritual side. I did however, feel the “enduring” part of it at many moments throughout the day when I bit off more than I could chew. One of the things Aaron didn’t mention in his analogy was that after teaching me in the morning, he left me to go ski with his friend and then left me for awhile so that he could actually have some fun and I could keep practicing.
I was just thinking that this too is like our lives–we don’t see God or Jesus Christ right here at our side, holding our hand, talking to us every step of the way. However, unlike what some people say, I don’t believe that the lack of their physical presence does not mean they don’t exist or that they don’t care about us. Aaron had given me a walkie talkie that I could call him on when I needed him. But you know what, sometimes Aaron was so far away that the walkie talkie was out of range and I felt that aloneness that we all feel when we feel like our prayers aren’t getting answered. But during those times I found advice and strength in those around me who were good skiers and they gave me good pointers on how to improve my methods as we rode the lift up together. God likewise answers our prayers through other people.
But then when it came time to the end of the day and the walkie talkie still wasn’t working, I remembered another resource that I had–I could reach Aaron by phone. And sure enough, as I looked down and pulled my phone out, I saw that Aaron had called and left a message, wanting to check in on me, but because I wasn’t paying attention, I had missed the call. And so we need to remember that sometimes when we feel God isn’t out there, it’s really us who has failed to pick up the line! Once I finally remembered to use that phone, I called him and he ended up being only 20 feet away from me. Crazy.
Anyway, I hope you don’t think my analogy is cheesy, but that’s what came to my mind as I was reading this blog. Who knew we could get so many life analogies out of one day of fun on the slopes!
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