Thank you, President Bateman, for introducing
me and for allowing me the privilege of introducing two Brigham Young University students who
will provide an a cappella vocal duet to set the stage for my remarks on forgiving others. David and Michael Foutz will sing “Lord,
I Would Follow Thee,” a hymn that highlights our need to emulate the Savior and, in particular,
our need “to refrain from judging unrighteously, to heal and comfort”. David and Michael are brothers and direct
lineal descendants of Bishop Jacob Foutz, who was shot and left for dead at the Haun’s
Mill Massacre in Missouri in October 1838. According to an account written by Jacob’s
wife, Margaret Mann Foutz, after the massacre Jacob and another brother survived by drawing
dead bodies over themselves and feigning death. Margaret records that these two men thus
saved their own lives and heard what some of the mob said. After the firing was over two little boys
that were in the [blacksmith] shop begged for their lives, but . . . one of the mob
said [“Nits will make lice,” meaning] ‘they will make Mormons’ and he put the
muzzle of his gun to the boys’ heads and [ended their lives]. After Margaret found Jacob, she got him home
and eventually assisted him in removing a bullet from his hip with a kitchen knife. She applied a poultice to his wound and disguised
him in women’s clothes to trick the murderous mob when it returned to exterminate male survivors. Though physically scarred for life, Jacob
did survive, and, what is most important, he thrived spiritually. He was called as a bishop in Nauvoo, served
a mission in Pennsylvania, and moved west with the Saints in 1847, continuing to serve
as a bishop until his premature death the following year. Although Bishop Foutz sought legal redress
for the financial losses he suffered at Haun’s Mill, he did not allow the poisonous venom
of hate and vengeance to destroy his spiritual life. Instead he bequeathed to his posterity a legacy
of faith and forgiveness that continues to the present generation. David Foutz serves as first counselor in my
bishopric, and the hymn that he and his brother will now perform honors the memory of their
progenitor and all the pioneers who forgave their persecutors and moved on, geographically
and spiritually, to establish a new life in Zion. Savior, may I learn to love thee,
Walk the path that thou hast shown, Pause to help and lift another,
Finding strength beyond my own. Savior, may I learn to love thee—
Lord, I would follow thee. Who am I to judge another
When I walk imperfectly? In the quiet heart is hidden
Sorrow that the eye can’t see. Who am I to judge another? Lord, I would follow thee. I would be my brother’s keeper;
I would learn the healer’s art. To
the wounded and the weary I would show a gentle heart. I would be my brother’s keeper—
Lord, I would follow thee. Savior, may I love my brother
As I know thou lovest me, Find in thee my strength, my beacon,
For thy servant I would be. Savior, may I love my brother—
Lord, I would follow thee. “Savior, may I love my brother / As I know
thou lovest me.” This was a hard lesson for me to learn. Twenty-five years ago I completed my freshman
year at BYU. At that time I never dreamed that I would
one day address the faculty and student body in a Marriott Center devotional. For one thing, the Marriott Center didn’t
even exist! For another, I was a Latter-day Saint convert
of less than two years and didn’t feel overly confident in my ability to expound on Church
doctrine. But I did feel prompted to embark on a full-time
mission. I had baptized my best friend—also a BYU
student—earlier in the year, and I was anxious to share the restored gospel with others. Before I could serve, however, I had to submit
to the rite of passage familiar to all who would serve missions. I had to have interviews with my bishop and
stake president, fill out several forms, undergo medical and dental examinations, make financial
arrangements, and attend to a variety of academic concerns. In preparation for my mission, I read or reread
LeGrand Richards’ A Marvelous Work and a Wonder and James E. Talmage’s Jesus the
Christ. I also tackled Talmage’s The Articles of
Faith. With the zeal of a convert I had previously
read Joseph Fielding Smith’s three-volume work Doctrines of Salvation and much of Bruce
R. McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine. I had a vivid dream in which I saw myself
called to Italy, where centuries before Paul had journeyed to preach to the Romans. When the call came, I was thrilled. The opening sentence of the letter read: “You
are hereby called to be a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
to labor in the Italy North Mission.” My dream had come true. Because I came from a non-LDS family, I could
not rely on them for financial support. I elected to pay for my mission with funds
I had previously set aside for my college education. I looked forward to my mission as one long
spiritual feast. Mine was to be the ideal missionary experience. I would love my companions, I would teach
the gospel daily by word and deed, and I would baptize regularly. After I had been in Italy for only four months,
I was called as a senior companion to a brand-new elder, a “greenie” whom I’ll call Elder
Brown. Proud of the linguistic skills that allowed
me to enjoy a senior position after so few months in a foreign land, I looked forward
to remaking Elder Brown in my own image—never minding that he was more handsome and more
personable than I. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out exactly
as I had planned. Elder Brown came from LDS pioneer stock and
from a much more well-to-do family. His grandfather invariably included a twenty-dollar
bill in his letters; I resented the perks that such extra cash allowed, even though
my companion invariably shared his bounty with me. Elder Brown had belonged to a social fraternity
during his freshman year—the type that never would have accepted a nerd such as I—and,
unfortunately, his fraternity brothers had exposed him to a number of undesirable things,
including risqué magazines. Then it happened. One afternoon during scripture study time
in our apartment I caught him “reading” (if that’s the right word) an unapproved
magazine—you know, the kind with a centerfold. It was an Italian edition of Playboy. He had purchased it while on splits with another
elder, and I was furious. I felt that Elder Brown had ruined my ideal
mission. I seethed in righteous indignation, but, rather
than rebuking my companion and then showing forth an increase in love, I chose to become
an expert on his every fault, which I cataloged and reviewed with some regularity in my mind. After a few challenging months together, my
junior companion was transferred, and it was at that point that I began my revenge in earnest. I have always been fond of telling stories
(in case you haven’t noticed), and I soon captivated not only later missionary companions
but entire districts with embroidered tales of my greenie’s sinful ways. Even after I returned from my mission, I continued
to recount his problems. The one thing that I couldn’t understand,
however, was the report that I had received from more than one source that Elder Brown,
in contrast to me, had become one of the top baptizing elders of our mission and had been
called to key leadership positions that had mysteriously eluded me. A few years passed. Then one day Elder Brown appeared on my doorstep. He asked to come in. We spoke alone in my living room for over
an hour. I asked what he was doing and learned that
he was happily married and an extremely successful businessman and entrepreneur. Because of the way I had stereotyped him,
I wondered about his activity in the Church. I was surprised to learn that he was not an
elder (as was I) but a high priest and serving on a high council. He then stunned me by relating how his favorite
high council talk was to share what he had learned from me while we were mission companions. He loved to tell young people preparing for
missions how much better prepared doctrinally I—the convert—had been than he—the lifelong
member—and how my example of gospel scholarship had inspired him to overcome his own shortcomings. I began to feel pretty rotten about all the
stories I had told about him. I prayed that he didn’t know what I had
done, but somehow I sensed that he did know. He then acknowledged that at a family reunion
one of his cousins, whom I had known in graduate school, had told him how I had recounted in
her presence and in vivid detail an episode Elder Brown had long ago repented of. My former companion did not berate me; instead
he asked if I could ever forgive him for his youthful mistakes. I knew then that it was I who needed to ask
him for forgiveness. In the pride of my heart I had sinned, and
I had sinned in multiple ways—in judging unmercifully, in harboring resentment, in
planning and executing revenge, and, perhaps most of all, in not allowing the possibility
that a brother could change, improve, and repent. “Savior, may I love my brother / As I know
thou lovest me.” I could not see the mote in my brother’s
eye because of the beam in my own. I had chosen to ignore the fundamental law
of repentance, taught by the Lord and modern-day prophets: We must forgive in order to be forgiven. Of this principle the scriptures are clear. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that
if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. As a Protestant growing up in the Bible Belt,
I recited the Lord’s Prayer by memory almost every Sunday. What I failed to realize as a child, as a
teenager, and even as a missionary was that the words “forgive us our debts, as we forgive
our debtors” really mean “Father, do not forgive me one iota more than I am willing
to forgive others.” The apostle Peter inquired long ago, “Lord,
how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” And Jesus answered, “I say not unto thee,
Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven”. Some of us—unwilling to accept that “seventy
times seven” does not mean, in this context, a precise number—keep track of grudges,
vainly nursing them and hoping that when the magic number of 490 comes along we can stop
forgiving altogether. We forget not a hurt, we forget not a grudge,
we forget not an offense. What we do forget is the fifth beatitude:
“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy”. We forget the example of the first Christian
martyr, Stephen, who cried as he was stoned, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. We disregard the counsel of Paul to “forgiv[e]
one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you”. We ignore the example of the Savior on the
cross, who pleaded, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”. When we are speaking of serious sins, the
Savior’s phrase “they know not what they do” has raised the question in some minds
as to whether the injunction to forgive includes forgiving those who know exactly what they
do and choose to do evil nonetheless. Modern-day revelation boldly proclaims that
Saints of the Most High God must forgive in order to be forgiven. The Doctrine and Covenants clearly teaches
that we ought to forgive one another; for he that
forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth
in him the greater sin. The passage continues:
I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men. President Spencer W. Kimball, extending this
idea, preached that “unless a person forgives his brother his trespasses with all his heart
he is unfit to partake of the sacrament”. What is the Lord asking us to do? What does it mean to forgive another person
his or her trespasses? The first recorded use of the verb forgive
in the King James Bible occurs in Genesis 50:17 and helps answer these questions. There we read that the last words of Jacob
to his son Joseph, who had been sold as a slave into Egypt by his brethren, were an
acknowledgment of the evil done and a request for mercy: “Forgive, I pray thee now, the
trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil.” Whereafter, the brothers confess their sin
to Joseph: “And now, we [thy brethren] pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants
of the God of thy father.” This confession is followed by a description
of Joseph’s softened heart: “And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.” Joseph’s reaction is telling of his magnanimous
character. Nevertheless, he first reprimands his brothers
and then forgives, telling them: “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good,
to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive”. “To forgive another” does not imply “to
disregard judgment.” Certainly forgiving another does not mean
that we hold in contempt the law of justice. In fact, Doctrine and Covenants 64:11 affirms
that the one who forgives should embrace judgment and hold the transgressor—especially, I
would argue, the serious offender—accountable for what he or she has done. Verse 11 states unequivocally: “And ye ought
to say in your hearts—let God judge between me [the offended] and thee [the offender],
and reward thee according to thy deeds.” This latter phrase echoes the words of Paul
regarding one who had done him “much evil.” The apostle prays that “the Lord reward
him according to his works”, and this should be our prayer as well. But it must be a prayer uttered not in hatred,
not in bitterness, but rather as “moved upon by the Holy Ghost”. To forgive a serious offense, in other words,
is to turn in faith to God, to pray that he will help the offender repent, and to allow
God to judge and reward. It means to accept humbly God’s righteous
judgment with faith, hope, and comfort, with joy and peace. I repeat: The concept of judgment is not jettisoned
overboard by the commandment to forgive even serious offenders. Rather, to forgive is to turn over to God
the ultimate right to judge and, if the offender refuses to repent, to allow Him to decree
the final punishment. As Amulek witnessed to Zeezrom, not even God
can save sinners “in their sins”. But how do we find the courage and inspiration
to forgive our brother his trespasses? As a young adult ward bishop, I conducted
during my first three years of service approximately 3000 personal, tithing settlement, and ecclesiastical
endorsement interviews. Long before the 3000th interview I realized
that many individuals who had gone through the formal steps of repentance still did not
feel forgiven. In many cases the only reason for their not
feeling forgiven stemmed from their not having forgiven others their trespasses. Keeping in mind that forgiveness of others
is a step in the repentance process helps many to find the strength to forgive. I have also discovered that true stories of
forgiveness are a powerful medium for teaching this principle. Inspiring stories of mercy can be found in
literature, in Church and world history, and in testimonies of living Latter-day Saints. Time limitations have forced me to limit my
selections to a handful of examples that I have found particularly meaningful. In modern history perhaps no more atrocious
crime has been committed than the Holocaust, the systematic murder of millions of Jews,
political prisoners, handicapped persons, and others by Hitler’s Nazi regime. Corrie ten Boom, a Christian political prisoner,
survived the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, but her beloved sister Betsie did not. After the war Corrie traveled the world preaching
sermons of reconciliation, peace, and forgiveness. Then it happened. She was called upon to practice what she preached. She records in her autobiography, The Hiding
Place, the defining moment of her Christian discipleship:
It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood
guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that
I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there—the roomful
of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face. He came up to me as the church was emptying,
beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,”
he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed
my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often . . . the
need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled
through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I
going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help
me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my
hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of
warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness. As I took his hand the most incredible thing
happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through
my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for
this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our
forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on
His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives,
along with the command, the love itself. This story is instructive to Latter-day Saints
because it dramatizes that in difficult cases we must call upon Christ to grant us his love
and his forgiveness, for we cannot accomplish this act of mercy alone. I now desire to share with you three short
but poignant accounts of forgiveness, all written at my invitation by BYU faculty members
for this devotional. These accounts have never been published. They are highly personal stories of dear friends,
colleagues whom I love and admire. When I think of them, I know that Brigham
Young University stands on sacred ground because their presence helps to hallow it. I originally intended for these teachers to
stand, come to this podium, and narrate their own stories. All declined out of modesty, stating that
their reason for agreeing to record their stories arose from a desire to help those
who are struggling to forgive another. Brothers and sisters, I do not wish to offend,
but I need to say that from my work on the university’s Self-Study Committee, I know
firsthand that there are departments on this campus where divisiveness is more common than
forgiveness. There are departments where colleagues are
quick to judge and slow to forgive. Perhaps a faculty member here today carries
a grudge, having been hurt by a careless remark or wrongful act of a colleague. Perhaps you know of someone who has been hurt
and refuses to forgive, someone who is allowing a wound to fester. Or perhaps someone here has been offended
by a roommate or teammate, brother or sister, mother or father, husband or wife, son or
daughter, boyfriend or girlfriend, student or professor, department chair or administrator,
ward member or bishop, boss or employee, or even stake president or General Authority. Whether the offense is perceived as intentional
or unintentional, willed or not, if it is troubling your mind or cankering your soul,
then the faculty accounts I am about to share are meant for you as well as for me. My first account has a name attached to it
because it treats someone who was the recipient of another’s tender mercy, someone who learned
how to forgive others by being forgiven himself. Larry Dahl is an associate dean of religion
on this campus. Several years ago, when he was my bishop,
he shared with a group of ward members a stirring lesson from his childhood. This is Larry Dahl’s story:
When I was five years old, two friends and I made ourselves a hideout by tunneling into
a haystack alongside a new barn in the neighbor’s yard, then digging out a spacious room right
in the middle of the haystack. We delighted in our secret meeting place. One day we decided to roast some hot dogs. Since our home was right next door, I secured
the matches to light a fire. You can imagine the rest of the story. The fire quickly got away from us. We scampered through the tunnel to safety,
and all three of us ran to our separate homes. I don’t know what the others did, but I
immediately went to my upstairs bedroom and climbed into bed, panic-stricken. Within minutes I heard the wail of the town
fire truck getting closer and closer. But it was too late. The haystack and the new barn were quickly
consumed. Fortunately, however, someone arrived soon
enough to get the animals out of the barn. Somehow my parents suspected I may have had
something to do with the fire, since they knew of our hideout. Not seeing me anywhere in the neighborhood,
they searched the house. As I heard their footsteps on the stairs,
I thought my pounding heart would jump right out of my body. When they entered the bedroom and witnessed
my fearful and tearful face, their suspicions were confirmed. Mother just sat on the edge of the bed and
held me. My father asked me to tell them what had happened. Through broken-hearted sobs I recited the
events of the afternoon. He quietly left the room while my mother stayed
and cried with me. I learned years later that my father paid
our neighbor for the hay and the barn. But from the day it happened to the day of
his death forty-five years later, my father never mentioned the event to me. Truly, it was as if he did not remember it. There is a coda or postscript to Brother Dahl’s
story, and it treats a role reversal that he experienced when he became a father. He writes:
Many years later when our two oldest boys were five and seven . . . , they broke a window
playing ball in the yard. My first impulse was to be upset and scold
them. My sweet wife, knowing the story of my own
five-year-old ventures, gently intervened. She said simply, “Windows are not nearly
as expensive as barns.” The principle that this story illustrates
is simple but often ignored by those who need to forgive. True forgiveness implies not mentioning past
sins, errors, or mistakes once they have been properly dealt with. In five-year-old Larry’s case, he needed
to express sorrow and to confess and accept responsibility for his careless and damaging
act. But once that was accomplished, he could do
little more as a kindergartner to restore the burned-down barn. And so a loving father paid the price for
Larry’s mistake and mentioned it to him no more. The scriptures teach that “he who has repented
of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more”. Brother Dahl, through his personal account
and writings, has helped me see that this principle is best understood in light of what
the prophet Ezekiel taught. If a sinner “will turn from all his sins
that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he
shall surely live, he shall not die.” Furthermore, “All his transgressions that
he hath committed . . . shall not be mentioned unto him”. Although it seems obvious that the Lord can
recall to memory anything from our past—in fact, we know from the scriptures that when
we repeat our sins, “the former sins return”—it is apparent from Ezekiel that the Lord’s
promise to remember no more the sins we have repented of means that he will remember them
to us no more. If the Lord will no longer remember to us
the transgressions we repent of, then surely it is incumbent upon us to allow others the
same opportunity. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland captured this idea
in his recent conference talk when he stated: “Closely related to our own obligation to
repent is the generosity of letting others do the same—we are to forgive even as we
are forgiven”. The next faculty account I share deals with
a much more serious act than barn burning. It has to do with forgiving someone who killed
a wife and a child. Though the heinous act did not contain the
element of intention inherent in the sin we call murder, the result was the same: a loving
husband lost his companion and infant daughter, and a four-year-old son was robbed of a mother
and baby sister. A colleague who now serves as a campus bishop
shared his story in these moving words: In a late evening of August we were beginning
an eleven-hour drive from Cody, Wyoming, to Salt Lake to support our mother who was worried
about my father’s open-heart surgery; we were close as a family and felt a strong need
to be together. My older brother was driving, his wife was
sitting next to my youngest brother, who occupied the front window seat. My wife was behind my driving brother, holding
our eighteen-month-old daughter, and I was on the opposite side with our four-year-old
son stretched out on the seat, his head in my lap. I awoke from a half-sleep to see headlights
crossing the road to our side, my brother swerving to avoid head-on contact. Swerving helped, but there was contact, nonetheless,
and it changed my life and my son’s life forever. The left side of the car had received the
most damage, my wife and daughter having absorbed the major portion of the shock. Although my daughter died later that night
in the hospital, my wife took an entire week before she could finally go. Everyone was hurt but me. While I was alone and assessing the damage,
praying for a saving car to happen by in the loneliness of the Wind River Canyon, and then
walking toward the other damaged car, I was immediately offended by an overwhelming stench
of alcohol. I briefly checked and found the nineteen-year-old
driver of the other car incoherent from drink, but otherwise unharmed. I was later told, after the police finally
arrived, that he had tried to find me to fight me, since he thought I would be angered by
what he had done. Eventually, he did find me and drunkenly asked
me to forgive him for what he had done that night. I certainly had not prepared myself for such
a request. My immediate thought was that if I did say
that I would forgive him, I would have to do it, since I would not play games with my
mind and my heart, given the incomprehensible changes of my newly defined life. I could not say no. I told him flatly that I forgave him, and
I meant it. In honesty, I must say that I have never wanted
to be his buddy or pal. Indeed, I cannot even remember his name, nor
do I know where he is now. But I will be eternally grateful for his asking
for forgiveness that Saturday morning before dawn, because in complying I was freed from
the thrall of anger and hate that otherwise could have brought even greater sorrow into
my life. From this tragedy I think I learned something
new: Forgiveness brings true and genuine freedom, often to the forgiven, but always and without
exception to the forgiver. This fine brother shared with me his conviction
that he never would have been called as a bishop had he refused the invitation to forgive. How could he speak on behalf of the Lord’s
church and bear testimony to penitent ward members that they were forgiven if he himself
had never been willing to forgive? The drunken driver in this story was, of course,
tried in a civil court and will one day stand accountable before God for his actions. Remember: Our forgiveness of others does not
remove their own need to repent and pay the penalties for their sins. As my dear colleague Professor Glade Hunsaker,
inspired by Elder Richard G. Scott’s writings on forgiveness, has helped me see—
The sweetness of spirit that follows forgiveness is absolutely essential to our daily growth
process, but the requirement to forgive often sends wrong signals to the offender, such
as: “You must forgive me, and when you have, my offense no longer exists.” Forgiveness on the part of the offended blesses
the life of the offender and greatly assists the healing process, but it must never be
taken as the resolution to a transgression that has not been given the proper steps of
repentance. Although we must forgive all, the Lord will
forgive only the truly repentant. My third account was written by a female faculty
member who is a convert to the Church. It is a story of abuse and, what is more important,
recovery from abuse. Abuse comes in many forms, including neglect,
improper care, and abandonment, as well as verbal, mental, physical, spiritual, and sexual
abuse. If anyone within the sound of my voice has
suffered such abuse, I urge you to seek professional help and spiritual consolation. Recovery from abuse is a process that can
take considerable time, much emotional energy, and deep faith. Forgiveness must be a goal of that recovery
process, for, as one LDS psychologist has written, “Forgiveness is an opportunity
to regain the internal peace of which evil has robbed us”. This is the final faculty story I wish to
share with you today. It is one person’s story of healing, of
finding peace through forgiveness and gospel ordinances. Alcohol addiction robbed my father of his
wife, his four children, his job, his mother, and finally his life. Alcoholism doomed my parent’s marriage from
the beginning. On their very first Christmas, Daddy got drunk
and broke all the lights on the tree. My mother stayed with him for 19 years anyway,
hoping to save the marriage for the sake of the children. I left home during my senior year of high
school because I could not bear to witness the violence anymore. When Mommy saw that Daddy’s problem was
destroying her children, she divorced him. We wanted to love our dad, but he was often
not himself. Under the bondage of alcohol, he was moody,
physically violent, and verbally abusive. One time he kicked my brother with his steel-toed
military boots. My brother was so badly bruised that he would
not dress-out for his PE class at school. He got in trouble because the teacher did
not know about our family background. We lived in terror. We never knew when Daddy would be sober or
when he would be drunk. We felt relieved when he was gone. We each suffered the consequences of Daddy’s
curse in different ways, but we all tried to forgive him. At the age of 18, I found peace and forgiveness
in the doctrines and ordinances of the gospel. A year after the death of my father, I arranged
for my home teachers to be the proxies for his temple work. Before my mission, I gathered all the family
history documents from my grandpa’s house. After my mission, I started doing the temple
work for my father’s family. In 1979, I did the temple work for my grandma
and felt her gratitude. The following year, I went to the temple with
some of my family home evening brothers and sisters. We were proxies as my father was sealed to
his parents. I cried, and the brother who did the sealings
said that the spirits of my family members were present. Temple work is the key to family healing and
forgiveness. Doing the temple work for my father helped
to set him free from bondage, which helped to set his parents free. Doing temple work also sets me free, one name
at a time. This sister knew more hurt in the span of
her first two decades of life than many of us will ever know. But through the Atonement of Christ, the plan
of salvation, and the act of forgiveness, she has come to know that peace “which passeth
all understanding”. This is the peace that living the gospel brings. She understands what it means to sing “Savior,
may I love my father / As I know thou lovest me.” In the end we must arrive at the point where
we can pray sincerely that the offender will repent, for our forgiveness does not insure
the Lord’s forgiveness. God’s forgiveness is conditional; it is
based on true, sincere, genuine repentance. As Spencer W. Kimball taught us, “Even the
Lord will not forgive a person in his sins”. I would like to close with a poem composed
by Marguerite Stewart. It is entitled “Forgiveness Flour.” The poem, written in the first person, features
an unnamed wife who answers her door to find a young woman in shame and seeking flour,
which symbolizes forgiveness, to make bread. The poem reads:
When I went to the door, at the whisper of knocking,
I saw Simeon Gantner’s daughter, Kathleen, standing
There, in her shawl and her shame, sent to ask
“Forgiveness Flour” for her bread. “Forgiveness Flour,”
We call it in our corner. If one has erred, one
Is sent to ask for flour of his neighbors. If they loan it
To him, that means he can stay, but if they refuse, he had
Best take himself off. I looked at Kathleen . . .
What a jewel of a daughter, though not much like her
Father, more’s the pity. “I’ll give you flour,” I
Said, and went to measure it. Measuring was the rub. If I gave too much, neighbors would think
I made sin Easy, but if I gave too little, they would
label me “Close.” While I stood measuring, Joel, my husband
Came in from the mill, a great bag of flour on his
Shoulder, and seeing her there, shrinking in the
Doorway, he tossed the bag at her feet. “Here, take
All of it.” And so she had flour for many loaves,
While I stood measuring. The phrase “While I stood measuring” characterizes
too many of us too much of the time. We metaphorically “measure flour” in an
attempt not to be overgenerous in our mercy. At the same time we pray that God will throw
a bag of flour at our feet—that is, that he will be boundless in his mercy toward us. One month ago the First Presidency issued
a letter to Church leaders in Utah County in anticipation of the Mount Timpanogos Temple
dedication. President Hinckley and his counselors urged
the Saints in this area to use this occasion as an opportunity to
cleanse their lives of anything that is displeasing to the Lord, eliminating from their hearts
any ill feelings of envy or enmity, and seeking forgiveness for anything that is amiss in
their lives. My prayer is that the forgiveness we seek
is large enough to include the forgiveness not only of ourselves but also of others. I say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
