Grant Goes on a Mission: RUNNING AROUND WITH FIRE EXTINGUISHERS

ELDER STARLEY AND ME WITH A GIANT ARGENTINE HOT DOG

This comes from a talk by Neil A. Maxwell: Meeting the Challenges of Today, and Becometh as a Child

Although I am far away, I have become aware of the various natural disasters that are affecting all over the world. These events are horrible and the people affected need our love and our prayers.

I am reminded of a talk by Neil A Maxwell, about the confusion of the world. He write many wonderful things about how we need to rely on God.

First, brothers and sisters, some brief samples illustrating the challenge of making our way through today’s Sinai of secularism, and then a focus on how inspired children help in that trek.

All about us we see the bitter and abundant harvest from permissiveness. A perceptive person has acknowledged: “The struggle to live ethically without God has left us not with the just and moral order we imagined but with disorder and confusion.

“Something has gone radically wrong with secularism. The problem has more than its share of irony, for secularism, in the end, has converted itself into a kind of religion. …

“… Now the transition is complete: the state has become the church” (Peter Marin, “Secularism’s Blind Faith,” Harper’s Magazine, Sept. 1995, 20).

The more what is politically correct seeks to replace what God has declared correct, the more ineffective approaches to human problems there will be, all reminding us of C. S. Lewis’s metaphor about those who run around with fire extinguishers in times of flood.

The more ineffective approaches to human problems there will be.

I love this metaphor of people running around with fire extinguishers in times of flood. We need to remember this metaphor as people are suffering in various parts of the world.

We need to remember what effective approaches will be. We need to constantly remember what saves people, where they are home, where and how they feel love.

We need to remember the children, who seemingly are closer.

Benjamin Ballam is the special spina bifida child of Michael and Laurie Ballam. He has been such a blessing to them and many others. Also spiritually precocious, Benjamin is a constant source of love and reassurance. Having had 17 surgeries, resilient Benjamin knows all about hospitals and doctors. Once, when an overwhelmed attendant became vocally upset—not at Benjamin, but over stressful circumstances—little three-year-old Benjamin exemplified the words of another Benjamin about our need to be childlike and “full of love” (Mosiah 3:19). Little Benjamin reached out, tenderly patted the irritated attendant, and said, “I love you anyway.” A similar episode occurred recently in an Israeli hospital, where little Benjamin, going through a necessary but very painful procedure, used the same loving words to reassure a physician. No wonder, brothers and sisters, in certain moments we feel children are our spiritual superiors.

Brothers and sisters, no wonder the divine direction is for each of us to “becometh as a child” (Mosiah 3:19).

Please put down your fire extinguishers and pull out the buckets. We´ve got a lot of work to do. But the good news is, we´ve got ALL the solutions. Or rather, We´ve got faith in God, a faith that moves mountains and isnt detained by mortal death.

LOVE YOU ALL,

ELDER AMANN

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