The Lord is at the Helm

Today I read Doctrine and Covenants section 52, a section that is mostly the Lord giving instructions to the saints about who should go on a mission where. There were a couple of things I took away from this section. The first is that the Lord is in charge of His church. He is at the helm and that is a comforting thought, at least it is to me.

It's really an amazing thing if you think about it that while President Monson, on the earth, is the head of this church, but really he is taking his direction from our Heavenly Father. The Lord is in charge of His church and He makes sure that His spokesperson, the prophet, passes along the messages that we need to be hearing. It is a comfort that our salvation is important the Lord. I know that we are told it is His work and His glory, but being human, mortal and a natural man, it is so easy to forget that God is NOT like us. And so it is a comfort to me to remember that the Lord cares whether or not I am living the gospel and whether or not living the gospel makes me happy.

On that same vein of caring about our salvation, the Lord has always been concerned with missionary work it would seem. In ancient days, the meridian of time, the early days of the church and now, He is very concerned that the message is being taught, that it is taught correctly and that His messengers go to the right places. When I was a missionary, half way through my mission we got a new mission president. In one of the first zone conferences we had after they came out to the field, they told us how missionaries are chosen as they heard it directly from, then Elder, Henry B. Eyring. It was a comfort to know that missionaries are so important that almost daily, an Apostle of the Lord spends time deciding where missionaries are going to serve. I have often wondered which Apostle looked at my picture and my application and decided I would serve a Mandarin speaking mission in Arcadia California. I suppose I will never know.

The final thought I had with this section is the Lord is once again arming His saints on how to detect unrighteous spirits and distinguish them from righteous ones. I often wonder just why the devil was so active in trying to deceive the early saints by sending spirits to impersonate angels. The conclusion I most often come to is that it is because the early saints did not know any better and he would be able to get the most bang for his buck. If he were to send unrighteous spirits now, the saints are armed with knowledge and would most likely be able to detect them fairly easily. But not only that, it was a different time back then. Just from reading the histories and the stories back then, it would seem that heavenly visitations were a very common occurrence at the time. They most certainly are not now and if a heavenly, or otherwise, messenger appeared to someone, it would be a big deal and the person might not be able to mentally take it.

I know I would be scared out of my mind if suddenly someone was in a room with me and they glowed. Although, if you notice that most of the time when an angel appears to someone, the first thing they say is "Fear not" so maybe even back then it was a very frightening experience. I'm not sure I would enjoy the experience myself, but I won't really know unless it happens to me one day.

That's all that really stood out to me today. As I have said though it is a comfort to know that the Lord is very concerned with the welfare of His children and that He wants them to all return to Him some day. I know that we all really know that, but it is easy to forget and it is nice to remember that the Lord is in charge and he cares. Try and remember that the next time you have a concern about something a Priesthood Leader has said. It could make all the difference in the world. Until tomorrow.