…which Comforter filleth with hope
and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end
shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God. (Moroni 8:26)
When I was reading this I understood it in a different
way. I was familiar with the
admonition to pray for charity, but here I found out that diligent prayer
causes love (charity, the pure love of Christ) to endure. So, we can pray for charity, but that doesn’t mean that it
will always stay with us because situations may come up in which we make
mistakes and cause the Spirit to leave, along with charity. So we have to be diligent about praying for it.
So if diligent prayer causes perfect love to continue, how
diligent is “diligent prayer”?
Maybe it means we should pray every time we feel spiritual
emptiness, especially since the verse says the Comforter fills us with hope and perfect love.
My mom once told me that she didn't automatically love me and my siblings when we were born. She thought there was something wrong with her because of it, but Moroni's admonition to pray for charity sunk into her heart and she decided she would pray to love us. She said it didn't come immediately, and she had to pray for some time. (I can't remember whether it was days or months.) She told me that eventually she did begin to love us. I am inspired by her experience and grateful that she was willing to share it because it showed me that mother love can be cultivated by prayer. I suppose that love in other types of family relationships can similarly be cultivated if we don't automatically have it.
2 comments:
I love your comment about how your mom admitted she didn't "automatically" love you and your siblings. I had the same experience, and, like your mother, I was filled with guilt for not doing what seemed to be so natural.
I, too, prayed, about this. I realized that the experience of motherhood was overwhelming me. I was so worried about being a good mother, but I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know how to love a child (especially when I had my first) because I hadn't had a child before. I was also reminded that my children are not mine. They are Heavenly Father's. I am their sister.
This reminder translated into a feeling of peace--i didn't know how to be a mom, but I knew how to be a sister! It also broadened my perspective. These were Heavenly Father's children. When each of my children were born, I didn't "love" them right away because I knew nothing about them. They were new in my life. But because of added perspective-they were God's children-I loved them. In other words, I loved them because I love Heavenly Father.
This perspective was only given to me through prayer, and I have also found that I need to pray a lot in order to maintain a better perspective on life.
Anyway...long comment. loved the post. :)
-catana
"i didn't know how to be a mom, but I knew how to be a sister!"
Great point! This is looking at what you DO know how to do.. Kind of like Elder Holland's talk about remembering what we DO believe.
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