Final Thoughts

Rivers in Dry Places

For thus sayeth the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place.

—Isaiah 57:15

 

The Most High in the High and Holy Place

As we experience all of the reachings we’ve discussed, all of the feelings after God, we will learn that one leads into another. They are more closely interrelated than we may first notice. I have found in my own life a fairly consistent pattern of connectedness. I may begin with a pouring out. Almost without fail, that pouring out results in an increase in my love for God, not only for listening to my problems and sins so patiently, but for the inevitable pouring in that follows. He has allowed us to find him. I discover myself entering into the Prayer of Quiet. I begin reaching through desire. Love and desire, or feeling after and finding him, creates in my soul those virtues Teresa spoke of. My soul responds to the watering of its garden. The flowers of virtue begin to bloom, and I plead with God sometimes to show me what I can do in return. He may reveal what service or consecration would please him, but far more often a new wrestling may commence, or I begin pondering and searching for ways to become anxiously engaged in his causes. I become active in the Lord’s own prayer wherein he pleaded, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10; see also Luke 11:2). Are we not in reality the agents of that kingdom’s coming? In time, our familiarity grows; we know the voice on the other side of the door and are more comfortable and confident that it truly is our Lord’s voice. Equally he knows ours. However, we must always beware of the error of stoicism, the belief that you can always do what you did once. More often than not, our pouring out and our wrestling, our reaching with desire and our knocking, our willingness to believe and to act will bring answers. The sister in my ward honestly wondered if our prayers will be enough. Through reaching high to the heavens, through pouring out, wrestling, believing, acting, desiring, and knocking, they will.

I once had an interesting dream, which I have pondered frequently and in which I have found many applications. Here is just one. I was walking by a dry riverbed filled with boulders. The banks were steep enough that the river could hold a great deal of water. There were many boats of various types and sizes up and down the river, each equipped with oars. As I walked along the bank, I watched people straining against the oars, trying to move their boats along the sand and rocks of the riverbed. Because there was no water, their progress was a continuous picture of frustration. Many had given up and sat holding the oars disconsolately without rowing. I was filled with a deep empathy as I watched the laboring, exhausted, or apathetic rowers.

I was given to understand that the riverbed represented life without the living water of truth, which flows abundantly from our Father in Heaven and his Son, and that one could have as much or as little as one desired. I thought immediately of Ezekiel’s vision of the rising waters he saw springing up from the doors of the temple and flowing into the dry wastes of the desert (see Ezekiel 47). This river became ever deeper as it wound its way forward. I reflected on the Savior’s promise that “he that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). He also promised that he would be for us “as rivers of water in a dry place” (Isaiah 32:2) and would “open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water” (Isaiah 41:18). Isaiah also gave us God’s assurance that he “will do a new thing. ... [He] will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19). These rivers bring what we all long for: peace. “I will extend peace to her like a river” (Isaiah 66:12).

The Lord mourns for our plight also as he watches his children trying to progress, straining at their oars against shifting dry sand and hard rock. “O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments—then had thy peace been as a river” (1 Nephi 20:18). I believe firmly that our Father in Heaven wants to reveal his truth and goodness and beauty to us. He does not wish us to row futilely among sand and boulders, but row powerfully among the currents of his revealed will and mercy. We must, however, desire the water fervently. Our reaching must lift high as the heavens. Do we not call our God “the Most High,” and does he not dwell in “the high and holy place”? (Isaiah 57:15). May we feel after God and find him. May we know him face to face. May we reach in such a way that prayer will always be enough. May the flowing waters fill our riverbeds and deliver us safely into the ocean of our Father in Heaven’s compassion, where we may enjoy face-to-face love and sharing eternally, an ocean which never ends and has no veil to reach through. There will be no “up” in that kingdom, no ceiling to pray our way through, but instead a sharing with that Being who “comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him, and all things are round about him; and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him, even God, forever and ever” (D&C 88:41).

The Blessing

I can conceive of no better conclusion than the beautiful blessing so beloved of the Jewish people, which was taught by the Lord himself from the Sinai wilderness. May we all know its fullest and highest fulfillment:

 

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. (Numbers 6:24–27)