Sage Thought of the Day: Forgiveness

The White Stocking

"Christmas means giving. The Father gave his Son, and his Son gave his life. Without giving there is no true Christmas, and without sacrifice there is no true worship."

 --Gordon B. Hinckley

The White Stocking

One of my family's most cherished Christmas traditions is the White Stocking. There are six people in my family, but every year we hang seven stockings. Six stockings are embroidered with each family member's name and decorated with the traditional symbols of the modern Christmas culture: Santa, reindeer, elves, and jingle bells all trimmed in red and green. 

But the seventh stocking is not like the others. 

It is plain white with white beading as its only embellishment. There is no name embroidered on the cuff, just some strings of hanging beads that lightly knock against each other when we open and close our front door or someone breezes by the mantel in the hustle and bustle of the season. 

This White Stocking belongs to Jesus. 

Every year on Christmas Eve the six of us gather together to read the Nativity story (Luke 2) and fill Jesus' stocking with gifts we think He would like most. We never put anything tangible in the stocking, just little slips of paper upon which we write specific goals/promises to make the world a better place by aligning our lives and hearts more diligently with His. The gifts are very personal, so we usually don't share them with each other. We fold the little slips up and address them like a gift, making sure to note the year.

We keep these little folded slips of paper in the stocking even after it has been taken down and stored away until the next year. We love to read our gifts from the last year and ponder on how well we gave the gift. We have several years of slips stored in the stocking and it is really interesting to read them year by year.  

Below is the article we read immediately before we filled Jesus' stocking with gifts this year. It was extremely moving. I'm not really a cryer, but I wept three times while I read it aloud to the family. This article will definitely become part of our yearly tradition. It just puts you in the right frame of mind to give gifts to the Savior. Enjoy!

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Three Levels of Christmas

William B. Smart 

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Christmas is a beautiful time of the year. We love the excitement, the giving spirit, the special awareness of and appreciation for family and friends, the feelings of love and brotherhood that bless our gatherings at Christmastime.

In all of the joyousness it is well to reflect that Christmas comes at three levels.

Let’s call the first the Santa Claus level. It’s the level of Christmas trees and holly, of whispered secrets and colorful packages, of candlelight and rich food and warm open houses. It’s carolers in the shopping malls, excited children, and weary but loving parents. It’s a lovely time of special warmth and caring and giving. It’s the level at which we eat too much and spend too much and do too much – and enjoy every minute of it. We love the Santa Claus level of Christmas.

But there’s a higher, more beautiful level. Let’s call it the Silent Night level. It’s the level of all our glorious Christmas carols, of that beloved, familiar story: “Now in those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus....” It’s the level of the crowded inn and the silent, holy moment in a dark stable when the Son of Man came to earth. It’s the shepherds on steep, bare hills near Bethlehem, angels with their glad tidings, the new star in the East, wise men traveling far in search of the Holy One. How beautiful and meaningful it is; how infinitely poorer we would be without this sacred second level of Christmas.

The trouble is, these two levels don’t last. They can’t.

Twelve days of Christmas, at the first level, is about all most of us can stand. It’s too intense, too extravagant. The tree dies out and needles fall. The candles burn down. The beautiful wrappings go out with the trash, the carolers are up on the ski slopes, the toys break, and the biggest day in the stores for the entire year is exchange day, December 26th. The feast is over and the dieting begins. But the lonely and the hungry are with us still, perhaps lonelier and hungrier than before.

Lovely and joyous as the first level of Christmas is, there will come day, very soon, when Mother will put away the decorations and vacuum the living room and think, “Thank goodness that is over for another year.”

Even the second level, the level of the Baby Jesus, can’t last. How many times this season can you sing, “Silent Night?” The angels and the star, and the shepherd, even the silent, sacred mystery of the holy night itself, can’t long satisfy humanity’s basic need. The man who keeps Christ in the manger will, in the end, be disappointed and empty.

No, for Christmas to last all year long, for it to grow in beauty and meaning and purpose, for it to have the power to change lives, we must celebrate it at the third level, that of the adult Christ. It is at this level—not as an infant—that our Savior brings his gifts of lasting joy, lasting peace, lasting hope. It was the adult Christ who reached out and touched the untouchable, who loved the unlovable, who so loved us all that even in his agony on the cross, he prayed forgiveness for his enemies. 

 This is Christ, creator of worlds without number, who wept because so many of us lack affection and hate each other – and then who willingly gave his life for all of us, including those for whom he wept. This is the Christ, the adult Christ, who gave us the perfect example, and asked us to follow him.

Accepting that invitation is the way - the only way – that all mankind can celebrate Christmas all year and all life long.

Love Thy Neighbor

"Every act of Love is a work of peace, no matter how small. If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." 

--Mother Theresa

 

C.S. Lewis Sunday - Morality and Peace

"The price of peace is righteousness. Peace cannot be imposed. It must come from the lives and hearts of men. There is no other way."

--Ezra Taft Benson

"There are two ways in which the human machine goes wrong. One is when human individuals drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage, by cheating or bullying. The other is when things go wrong inside the individual--when the different parts of him (his different faculties and desires and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another. You can get the idea plain if you think of us as a fleet of ships sailing in formation. The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another's way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order. As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other. If the ships keep on having collisions they will not remain seaworthy. Or, if you like, think of humanity as a band playing a tune. To get a good result, you need two things. Each player's individual instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so as to combine with all the others. ...

"Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play. ...

"Almost all people at all times have agreed (in theory) that human beings ought to be honest and kind and helpful to one another. But though it is natural to begin with all that, if our thinking about morality stops there, we might just as well not have thought at all. Unless we go on  to the second thing--the tidying up inside each human being --we are only deceiving ourselves.

"What is the good of telling the ships how to steer so as to avoid collisions if, in fact, they are such crazy old tubs that they cannot be steered at all? What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think, and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realize that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society."

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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Two Glasses of Water

Let Go!

"People in general would rather die than forgive. It's THAT hard. If God said in plain language, 'I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die,' a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin."

--Sue Monk Kidd,
The Secret Life of Bees, p. 277

When I was an early teen, a friend invited me for a day of recreational boating with her family. I was beside myself with excitement to spend a fun-filled Saturday out on the water with friends! I had never been on a boat outing, but I had heard the many virtues of water-skiing from my friends and I was dying to try it.

I made a lot of good memories that day, but something happened when I made my first attempt at water-skiing that has left a lasting impression upon my mind.

As I climbed down into the water, my friend and her family gave me a full tutorial, complete with a warning that the initial pull of the boat would be profound. But while I expected it to be a good firm yank, I still wasn’t quite prepared for how strong it actually was. When the boat finally took off, my 13-year-old body immediately flung out of the water, and I was violently slapped face down into the water and dragged for what seemed like a mile. All the while, I was screaming futilely amid mouthfuls of water: 

“STOP! STOP!”

Eventually the boat did stop, to my half-drown relief. I basked in the intense elation of near escape from death for about 1 second before the murderous explosions of anger set in. As the boat turned to retrieve me, I was fanning the flames of my rage. How DARE they drag me around for their amusement! I might have drowned! I am going to give them a piece of my mind! They will PAY!

As soon as they were within earshot, I shouted, “WHY would you drag me around like that? You nearly KILLED me!”

Then came the haunting reply, “Why didn’t YOU let go?!”

All my burning flames of indignation were instantly exhausted like a small match thrown into a raging sea of my own foolishness. While I had been shouting “STOP!” they had been shouting, “LET GO!” And it never occurred to me that my safety had literally been in my own hands the entire time! I had clung to that handle as if my life depended on it, when in actuality all I had to do was release it.

Isn’t that just like life?

How many times have I held on to anger, resentment, sadness, and pain like I clung onto that water-skiing handle? How many times have I blamed someone or something else for my struggles and problems?

I’m irritable because someone cut me off in traffic. I have pain because of stress. I’m offended because someone didn’t act the way I thought they should. I’m angry because someone was hateful to me. I failed because I had a bad teacher. Come to think of it, NONE of the problems I experience are my fault! I am a victim and I’m entitled to my negative emotions!

“Stop! Stop! I’m drowning!”

Wait a minute…perhaps I haven’t stopped reacting long enough to realize that if someone or something else is responsible for everything that’s wrong in my life, then I have to wait around until that someone or something changes so that I can feel better.  

Why wait for the boat to stop? Just let go! Take back your life and respond instead with love, peace, joy, forgiveness, and/or kindness. Choose not to blame others. Choose not to be offended. Supplant revenge with release. 

Don’t forget YOU are holding the handle!