Sunday Thoughts on Joy, Sorrow, and Prayer
Blue Grosbeak
I gave a talk today (for those not of my faith, a “talk” is what we call a sermon for the congregation) about joy and sorrow and the connection prayer has to each. Below is a bit of an extended version of this talk with some sections that I did not use today due to time limitations. I wish I could have shared it all, but I don’t believe anyone really wants to listen to me yap on for that long, so I’ve added the edited parts here.
Today, want to talk about three things that are interconnected.
Being happy and finding joy,
the fact that sorrow and pain will hit all of us,
and what the Lord wants us to do with both situations.
There is a virtuous cycle found in Doctrine & Covenants 136:28-29.
It says:
28. If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
29. If thou art sorrowful, call on the Lord thy God with supplication, that your souls may be joyful.
It makes such a simple circle. I had to graph it out so I could easily remind myself of it.
Happiness Begins with Embracing our Bounty
I was told a story by a leader at my place of employment recently in response to my simple question of “how is it going?” A simple question asked many times a day at the beginning of longer conversations. This had been a tough day for this leader. He had every right to be frustrated and upset, like many around him were. He reminded me, with just the right amount of humor, how lucky and blessed we are. For his own privacy I won't quote him and can’t say exactly what happened that caused him to feel this frustrated. It had to do with a project we were both working on. He is not a member of our church, and I'm not even sure what faith he holds if any, but he went through a list of amazing things that have gone right for both of us. He said, "think about the size of the universe and all the trillions of billions of stars out there and somehow our grouping of carbon atoms and other elements is here in the perfect place to support life. Then think about the earth and all it gives us. The fact that we were born in this country where we have freedom and a great economy giving us jobs and the ability to work and be productive.” He then mentioned his family and how lucky he is to have them. He continued, “Our employer pays us very well and gives us wonderful benefits and opportunities. We are never hungry or wanting. So how could a bad meeting with some bad outcomes diminish all that??"
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave a similar plea to the youth in General Conference of April 2022 that I think we should all take to heart. He told them (and us) to, “begin your search for happiness by embracing the bounty we have already received from the giver of every good gift.” The path to happiness is to realize how much you have been given and stop comparing and reaching for more. If you see others in need share what you have and reach out a helping hand.
Awe Can Brings Happiness
NASA, over the last few years or so, has been sharing unbelievable pictures of our universe. The Webb Telescope was launched in the recent past and is now functioning fully. This telescope is orbiting Earth 1.5 million km above us. It can see and make images of the furthest things away from us that the laws of physics allow to exist, and all with amazing clarity. These objects are literally billions of light years away at the very edge of the universe. We can see light that left stars billions of years ago and has been traveling through space to reach us for billions of years. We can see galaxies, stars, planets, clouds of immense matter, and so much more than was not even imaginable even 5 years ago. We are looking at and searching for the first objects created in our universe.
That is awe inspiring.
As I look at these pictures it seems to be beyond my imagination that all of this exists, and that we can see it. To think that our Heavenly Father with the help of Jesus Christ (and maybe the helping hands of other angels that possibly included us in the pre-existence) created all this. It was created for us. There are currently estimated to be 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. Over 200 billion galaxies. All of which are under the control of God. To think that I was created here on this earth, during this time, with a body and a family, with the technology we have, with the Gospel given to us, in this immense universe it hard to imagine how lucky - or much more importantly - how loved we are. We see in Genesis 1:14-16 that all this was created billions of years ago so that we would have them for “signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.” It also says God created them “for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.”
Think about how a smile can affect you at the right time, how the smell of a newborn baby can bring joy, how the view of a beautiful vista as the sun sets can bring tears, and then be amazed at what has been created. The beauty of music, and the wonder of the written word, uncontrolled laughter with a loved one, and so much more. All of these are miracles in a miracle universe that is beyond our imagination to understand. If you are not in awe of this, seek professional help.
All of this was given to us as part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was created to fulfil the plan of our Heavenly Father to allow us to progress and have joy. Their work is to bring us joy. Thinking and feeling this awe can only bring me happiness.
Happiness and Sorrow
But we are also in a mortal fallen world. We will have struggles and immense pain.
Bad things happen to all people. Because every person who has ever lived has their agency and we live in a fallen world with sickness and pain and death, all will have troubles. Some troubles are small, and others are devasting. We mourn with others and strive to lift their burdens as others do the same for us.
Sometimes it is the simplest answers or simplest advice that we fail to follow or listen to. We always seem to feel our challenges are more complicated than these simple answers can help with. Rarely is that true. As humans there seems to be a tendency to want to wallow in our problems longer than needed. As I say this, I want to be clear that in no way at all should any of this negate anyone's pain or troubles. Some can be beyond our capacity to solve without help. Professional and medical help is often needed. Time to heal can be long. But through this, it is the simple things that we forget, ignore, or simply do not do.
Let me re-read that formula put forth in the Doctrine and Covenants again.
28. If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
29. If thou art sorrowful, call on the Lord thy God with supplication, that your souls may be joyful.
Pray to the Lord in troubled times. Pray to the lord in happy times. When bad things happen call on the lord in supplication for comfort and peace. He will send His comfort. When feeling happiness give the Lord prayers of thanksgiving. In this life we will all feel pain and loss, but don't forget about the promises of the Lord.
Habakkuk Found That the World Can Be Overwhelming
In a short book in the Old Testament, that to be honest I never really noticed until we studied it with the Come Follow Me Program, I found a wonderful example of a prophet dealing with and struggling through troubled times.
Habakkuk cried to the Lord out of frustration. It seemed to me as I read this that he was feeling at the very end of his rope with how bad the world was, and what was happening around him. Violence, death, war, hatred, division, everywhere around him. I think we all feel this way sometimes. I know somedays we can look around and see nothing but evil, pain, violence and hurt. We can be burnt-out or even victims of other’s evil action. We have all felt what he felt here.
“O Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!”
What struck me as I read this was that the prophet Habakkuk still prayed and brought his grievance to the Lord, even in all his frustration and even anger. In my experience the worst thing that we can do when all we see, or feel is pain and trouble is to walk away from the Lord. I’m sure our loving Heavenly Parent delights in us when we are happy as any parent would do, but I don’t believe that joy they feel in us is diminished even when we reach out for help in times of anger and frustration. Pain and even violence should draw us closer to the Lord, if only to complain as the prophet Habakkuk did here. At least that is taking the right first step. The Lord will be there to help with the next steps. Never forget to reach out to Him.
Repentance Is Also Part of the Pathway to Joy
As we call on the Lord, we may feel the need for repentance or feel inspired to fix something in our own lives. For some people, maybe even for all of us at times, repentance is seen as a painful experience. It is true that admitting to your mistakes, realizing that you are not as strong or good as you thought you were, and making changes can be very hard. It is also true that this process is the way to find joy because it is the way that leads to Jesus Christ.
Repentance should be one of the things we feel awe and joy over. We have this opportunity to repent, do over, and improve ourselves due to, and becasue of the Atonement of Christ.
Repentance usually starts by feeling sorrow. Not just any sorrow, but "Godly sorrow." Worldly sorrow leads to shame, hiding, depression, and other effects that can cause a spiral downward. Godly sorrow is the way to truly learn of your weaknesses, then as you repent we turn that over to the Lord. Shame is not a part of Godly sorrow. Instead, we feel a desire to be more like Christ.
Repentance prepares us and our hearts to receive the influence of the Holy Ghost. When we are filled with the Holy Ghost we are filled with Joy.
I have often heard that we should think about the pain the savior felt on the cross and at Gethsemane. It is said that these thoughts will motivate us to avoid sin. For me, I much prefer the thought of thinking of the Joy our Savior felt and feels now as he opened the door that allows all of us to progress and return home to our Father. For me, that is a larger motivator. To feel the love of the Savior is more motivational. Elder Craig C. Christensen in April of 2023 said this, "We speak often of the pain and suffering of Gethsemane and Calvary, but seldom do we speak of the great joy the Savior must have anticipated as He offered His life for us. Clearly, His pain and His suffering were for us, that we might experience the joy of returning with Him to the presence of God."
Remember That God Has Not and Will Not Leave Us
God does not leave us. We are his children. We have heavenly parents who love us beyond what we can imagine. Our brother and Savior Jesus Christ gave his life for us. The Atonement allows us to return to our loving home and to God. God will never leave us. We may leave him. We may lose our connection to him. We may step away for a time, or we may be distracted or rebellious, we may become angry at Him and actively work against his teachings. In doing so, we left God. God is still there with open arms and waiting for a loving embrace with us.
Isaiah may have been speaking directly to and about ancient Israel in Isaiah 50:1 (which was shared again by Jacob in 2 Nephi 7), but there are so many ways to understand these prophecies. One of the most important ways is to make it personal to us in our lives today. As we took on the covenant of baptism, we became part of Israel or the covenant people, so this is about me (and you) personally as well as the people of his time.
“Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.”
God in this verse is trying to shake us out of our doom and gloom or of our anger and see that He is still there as always. He has not and will not ever abandon us. He has not sold us, he has not divorced us. We sold ourselves. The savior has paid the price. Christ has bought us back. It is now up to us to return, listen, and hear His voice.
All Who Ask Will Receive
As we see in that formula from Doctrine and Covenants, prayer is the key in good and bad times.
Let me read it one more time:
28. If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
29. If thou art sorrowful, call on the Lord thy God with supplication, that your souls may be joyful.
Jesus told his followers all who ask will receive an answer. All who seek will find, and all who knock shall have the way or the door opened to them. I have wondered, probably like all of us at some point, if this is just an unlimited or unqualified promise for us. Can I have anything I want just for the asking? The answer to that is obviously “no”. It is important to think about and ponder what the Lord is saying here. He says ALL who ask will receive. The questions on my mind are what should I ask for, and what should I receive or what do I need.
This is not a genie-in-the-bottle situation. We can easily see with a little logic, or very basic gospel wisdom, that the Lord is not a genie granting wishes. What happens if I ask for wealth untold? Or for a great car and huge house to make my co-workers jealous? Will I receive it? Does the promise from Jesus cover me seeking to make myself look more rich and powerful than my neighbors? What if I ask for the death of my enemy? What if I ask for all the rules and commandments of the Gospel to be removed? Will any of that happen? We all know the answer is no. So, what should we ask for?
Let’s start with the assumption that we have faith in the Lord, and we want to do the will of God. Yes, we are human and weak, and we would like life to be easy and have many comforts around us. Deep down inside, those with even small faith, know that in the end following the Lord is where joy is. We also read that “… men [and women] are that they might have joy.” (2 Nephi 2:24-25). Joy comes from the Lord, while not always easy, it is there for us.
May I suggest a few questions to start with. While there is more than one way to ask any question, I think the list below is a great place to start when we are talking about asking the Lord. I also know he will open the door and provide answers for these questions. We need to be patient and listen, but these questions are a great starting place to “reason together” with the Lord. (Isaiah 1:18).
What am I not seeing in those around me who I can help?
What is the best way for me to help [insert name here]? How can I better feel God’s love?
What would you have me understand from my scripture reading today?
What is most right in my life right now? Help me understand what I should keep doing and am?
What is most wrong in my life right now? Where should I work first to improve my life? What would you have me focus on to become closer to you or a better person?
What am I not seeing in myself that would most help me improve my life?
These questions are a little like diagnostic inquiries. Ask more questions after these as you find answers or feel inspired to burrow down to the roots of what you are truly looking for. These are ways to start a conversation or of “asking” and “knocking”. These conversations may take many days or more likely many years, but this is a good way to start finding the will of God.
The door will be opened for you, and you will find all you could ever imagine.
Putting Yourself in Touch with God’s Possibilities
Our perspective is not God’s perspective. God’s ways are not our ways. Prayer is a way to open ourselves up to the possibilities of what God may have in store for us. Rather than thinking of prayer as a place to list our requests, we can think of it as a place to learn of the wonders that God sees. We can see it as a place to learn just a little more of the potential in us that God is working on. We can look at it as a place to have God open our eyes to a much wider world than the one we see.
Kim Matheson, a former member of this ward that some of you may know, who has studied and written about prayer much of your life, gave a great example of this. She tells the story of praying for another person, in this case a child who is driving you crazy, or who's decisions you cannot approve of, or with who you are not sure what to do next. She says,
“Part of what you're doing in that prayer is not just asking God to fix the situation. You're asking God to help you see your child more capaciously, to see their potentials, to see them as a child of God, to see the way that he might be working with them, not just on what you are working with them. You are injecting more potential and a broader perspective about that child. I think prayer is where we do this with every object and every person that we pray over.“
We receive this larger perspective over time. Listen to what God has to tell you. Jacob said this,
“Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, brethren, despise not the revelations of God.”
Prayer is the process we have to open the dialogue and to receive that revelation of God’s ways.
A Very Personal Example From My Mother
One of the more touching examples I have of this is a story from my mother. During a time of great stress in her and my father's life they had to go through some great changes. She felt horrible about some actions she took. Now, like all mothers, she is closer to perfect than I will ever be. So, the action she took and felt bad about may not seem like a great sin, but the pain she felt was no less great to her.
This is a story my mother wrote as part of an online project making a book of her life. The question she was answering here was to talk about the best day she that she can remember.
"One of my best days didn’t start out as one of my best. The day started with me going out to put more seed in the pan where I fed the Grosbeak birds while living in Park City, UT. This was the second home we lived in since I started to feed the birds. Somehow, they managed to follow me to our new home and came twice a day for food. There were 3 or 4 bird-couples who came and they would even bring their young birds and feed them by mouth at the feeder. They seemed not be too afraid of me and would even land on the deck rail while I refilled the feeder pan. I could sit on the deck and enjoy their company.
"This particular morning was different. We had learned that the lady who rented us the house we lived in was putting it up for sale and that we must move down to the valley and to Salt Lake City. It was a very emotional day. I started to feel very guilty for feeding the birds. I knew they were wild, and I worried that feeding them might leave them not knowing how to find food for themselves. I was also very unhappy about leaving Park City. It was so beautiful and peaceful there that I thought it might never be the same in Salt Lake. Besides whom would continue to look after the birds. My heart was full of regret and sadness.
"I found myself praying to God and pouring out my worries and troubles. I told God how troubled I was in feeding the birds for the past few years and now I probably had turned these beautiful wild birds into birds that might starve because they did not know how to hunt for food. I needed to know if they would be alright. I sat there for half the day telling Him how sorry I was and that somehow I needed to know if they would be ok.
"Our house was built on a high hill with outdoor stairs leading from the bottom of the garage to the house up at least 2 full stories. The stairs had trees and shrubs on each side. As I sat there feeling terrible, I looked up and noticed a pair of Grosbeak landing on the feeder. I had the strongest feeling to go outside. What happed next was truly a gift from God. This was a gift to me only because God loves me - me out of trillions of people who were much more in need of help and had more important problems in life. I know without any doubt that this gift was given to me so that I would know that He heard my sorrow and that He wanted me to know that He knows and cares about me.
"In my many years in Park City I don’t think I have ever seen Grosbeak birds flock together in large groups or migrate together. When I stepped outside I saw 3 or 4 birds landing on the rail. When I looked down to the stairs I noticed a couple more. I then started down those long stairs from the deck. As I did each tree lining the stairs became full of Grosbeak birds. I had never seen so many in one place. As I went down the stairs walking very close to them, they never flew away. They continued just landing there filling each tree. I have never felt such love and happiness.
"This was a very personal gift just for me not only because I had prayed for it, but because He understood and loves me. He wanted to let me know that the birds would be just fine.
My mother continued, "To some this may sound like a weird or unimportant story, but I know from this experience that even though God has trillions and trillions of people He is looking after, He can feel and care personally for me. He can do the same for each of us. Never doubt that God does not know you personally. If we do not feel His love, it is because we have left Him. God will never not be there for each of us. He may not answer our prayers exactly the way we think they should be answered, but He knows the plan for each of us and He knows the plan ahead. And sometimes God will send a little miracle only you will understand, just to let you know he is there and knows and loves us individually."
Push Through the Struggle and Improve Our Personal Prayers
Probably like many of you, I have struggled with personal prayer all my life. Over the last few years, I can say while I'm still not great at it, I have developed an extremely strong testimony of prayer. God is there and will never leave us. Take that first step in faith, and He will show you He is there.
28. If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
29. If thou art sorrowful, call on the Lord thy God with supplication, that your souls may be joyful.
Would I listen or be more like the Nephites, pushing him out of the city and ignoring his warnings?