This was a Sacrament Meeting talk given by the author on September 15, 2024 in Eugene, Oregon

Doctrine and Covenants 14:7: “And, if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God.” 

This scripture sounds great. Keeping God’s commandments and enduring all the way till the end will give us the greatest gift imaginable.

I think there was a time in my life where I could solidly imagine what I thought this great gift of eternal life would be like and a scripture like this may have been a motivating factor for me to keep the commandments. 

But, I’m not sure what’s happened – probably a mix of the grind of raising three kids and balancing all of life, my own intellectual and spiritual development, and experiencing very low periods of postpartum depression after having babies – but somehow today I cannot imagine this eternal life. So, without being able to imagine that, this scripture doesn’t actually motivate me. It’s too vague. My imagination is too foggy. I just can’t make decisions today based on what I try to imagine something in the very distant future might feel like. 

Sometimes my thoughts wander to things more like this: “Endure to the end so that I can have eternal life – someday? But what about my problems today? What about comforting my teenager through difficult friend problems? What about being screamed at by my three year old because I gave her the blue cup instead of the purple cup? What about the imposter syndrome I’m always feeling at work? What about the unexpected bills that seem to pile on – like last month when I showed up at the dentist for a toothache and they told me it was cracked all the way through and they’d need to pull it out right then and, by the way, the replacement would cost $3500? What about? What about? What about?” And those are the days when I’m just focused on myself in the moment and things are going relatively well. Other days I’m thinking about bigger problems – wars, poverty, racism, sexism, LGBTQ+ discrimination – and what role I can play in making the world a little bit better. The idea of a far off future of eternal life just sounds too far off when I’m dealing with the mundane and the big problems of today.

So today, rather than talking about “enduring to the end,” I want to talk about “enduring to the end…today – just one day at a time.”

If this resonates with you on any level, this talk is for you. If this doesn’t resonate with you, well – put yourself in others’ shoes and take a moment to realize that it might be resonating for the person sitting next to you.

Let me start by testifying of my belief that Christ loves us. Christ loves us so much that He is there for you during the big trials that life throws: through sickness and grief and loss and tragedy. But he’s also there for you at 6pm on a random Tuesday night when you’re stressed about something that happened at work and you’ve been driving carpools and are struggling to get dinner on the table and your three year old is screaming about needing the purple cup. He’s also there for you when you wake up at 3am nervous or anxious or worried about something that needs to be done that day. He’s also there for you when you worry about whether a decision you are making, or maybe have already made, is the right one for your family. Christ is there for me and for you through all of this. Christ loves us.

So, for me: enduring to the end really has nothing to do with me thinking about some end that I struggle to imagine. Instead, enduring to the end means learning how to feel Christ on those stressful random Tuesdays when the purple cup threatens to push me over the edge. It means learning to rely on Christ to help me make decisions for my family. It means learning how to rely on Christ to help me when I realize I’ve made a decision that I need or want to change. It means learning how to rely on Christ when I’m wanting to develop my relationships with my family or friends. It means learning how to rely on Christ when I’m seeking forgiveness. More succinctly, for me, enduring to the end means learning how to love the Savior who loves me. 

Recently I read the lyrics of one of the new hymns that has just been added to our hymnal and they really spoke to me as they apply so much to my thoughts on learning how to love the Savior. Hymn 1008 called “Bread of Life, Living Water” written in 2011 by Composer Annette W. Dickman.

Before I read the lyrics to you, I want to share a little bit of background about the song. According to the SL Tribune: “Composer Annette Dickman said the inspiration for her creation, “Bread of Life, Living Water,” sprang from her private worship. “I wrote this hymn for me,” she said in a news release. “I had been studying and pondering a lot about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and particularly how it related to me personally. I wanted to develop a closer relationship with him.”” (https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/05/30/six-years-after-lds-church/)

So now, as I read the lyrics, I’d like you to think about how Christ’s sacrifice relates to you personally. Here are the lyrics:

• 1. Jesus offered up His body on the cross in bitter pain. Freely He gave up His life so that we might live again.  
• 2. In the garden Jesus suffered ev’ry sin and ev’ry woe, Bleeding drops from ev’ry pore, so we could forgiveness know.
• 3. Now I come before the altar, off’ring up my broken heart, Seeking for the blessed gifts His Atonement can impart.   
• CHORUS: Bread of Life, Living Water, Feed my soul, fill my heart. Give to me new life in Thee, And make me whole, complete and holy, Bound to Thee eternally

I love that chorus, written as a prayer – Christ is our Bread of Life and our Living Water and ready to feed our souls and fill our hearts, making us whole. But how do we get there? How do we feel that? 

The answers to this are going to vary based on the person and the moment in your life. 

For me, I feel a glimpse of this wholeness in certain moments: When my three year old is feeling cuddly and gives me a big hug, I can take a breath of gratitude for this beautiful relationship I have with her and feel my Savior’s love encircling this relationship. Around the dinner table on the rare night that we’re all getting along and having a nice conversation, I can take a breath of gratitude for the relationships with all my immediate family and feel gratitude to God for my life. When I’m in nature and see the beautiful lakes and oceans and trees and green, I can take a breath of gratitude and really recognize that the Savior wants me to enjoy this beauty. When I surround myself with friends and extended family where my relationships with them really feed my soul, I can take a breath of gratitude and feel love for my Savior who created all these beautiful people that I can develop beautiful relationships with. Indeed, I feel Jesus’s words written in John 13:34 “As I have loved you, … love one another” to be words spoken meant to bring joy to us in the journey. As we love those around us, we’ll feel closer to Christ and feel that love.

But these are the moments where it’s easier to feel Christ’s love. It’s easier to “endure to the end” because the journey feels beautiful.

The moments where it’s difficult are when I don’t feel that beauty. 

I have a very vivid memory from 2009 when I was serving as a missionary in Peru. One morning I was just feeling so homesick. I wanted to speak English. I wanted to eat anything besides rice and chicken. I wanted to hug my mom. I felt lonely and far away from everything familiar. I remember kneeling down and asking God for comfort. In that moment the comfort was immediate. It felt as though God was hugging me. I held onto the feeling of that moment that day and in days to come as I tried to cope with the difficulty in being so far from home. That was one beautiful moment that carried me through the day and the week. It carried me as I sought to love the Savior who I believe loves me – and that moment helped me to feel that love.

I want to mention that it’s not always this easy and this beautiful when I’m seeking comfort. It’s been 15 years since that day. I have had dips so low in my mental health that, no matter how much I prayed and asked God for comfort, I felt nothing. For a whole year after my second kid was born, I never felt the Spirit. I felt alone and empty, swallowed by postpartum depression. On the other hand, in these 15 years, I have had moments so beautiful that I felt Christ’s love in my heart when I look around and see the beauty of the world. And there have been a lot of days in between. Enduring to the end – or learning to love the Savior who loves me – has had a lot of ups and downs. And I think that’s normal and okay.

I think a huge part of learning to love the Savior is learning how to allow the Savior to help us repent, or as I like to word it: help us make positive changes in our lives and help us to be more full of love for those around us.

In October 2007 conference, Julie B. Beck (the First Counselor in the Young Women General Presidency at the time)  said, “It is not possible to make real change all by ourselves. Our own willpower and our own good intentions are not enough. When we make mistakes or choose poorly, we must have the help of our Savior to get back on track. We partake of the sacrament week after week to show our faith in His power to change us. We confess our sins and promise to forsake them. When our best efforts are not quite enough, it is through His grace that we receive the strength to keep trying.”

Her quote reminds me of a conversation with a coworker I had several years ago. My coworker had grown up in a home that was both abusive and religious so, understandably, he did not have good feelings toward religion. He knew that I was religious and one day he said to me, “I don’t understand why you’d want to have to give God credit for your success in life. Don’t you want to be able to say that you built this life rather than give all the credit to your idea of God?” I paused to think about what he’d said since I’d never really heard this argument. But, as I considered, I realized why I don’t agree. I responded with something like, “I see what you’re saying, but I guess I look at it differently. Life is hard for everyone. But if I can get through life with an all-powerful and all-loving being willing to help me every step of the way, why would I want to turn that down?” As Julie B. Beck indicated, Christ wants to help us make real change every day of our lives. He’s here to help us. He’s here to comfort us. He’s here to heal us when we need healing, make us whole when we feel empty, give us strength when we feel depleted. We just need to allow Him in.

In October 2017 General Conference, Jean B. Bingham (the Relief Society General President of the time) told a story that illustrated this point: “One beautiful spring day I left the door open to enjoy the fresh air. A small bird flew in the open door and then realized this was not where it wanted to be. It flew desperately around the room, repeatedly flying into the window glass in an attempt to escape. I tried to gently guide it toward the open door, but it was frightened and kept darting away. It finally landed on top of the window drapes in bewildered exhaustion. I took a broom and slowly reached the bristle end up to where the bird nervously perched. As I held the head of the broom next to its feet, the bird tentatively stepped onto the bristles. Slowly, very slowly, I walked to the open door, holding the broom as steady as I could. As soon as we reached the open door, the bird swiftly flew to freedom. Like that bird, sometimes we are afraid to trust because we don’t understand God’s absolute love and desire to help us. But when we study Heavenly Father’s plan and Jesus Christ’s mission, we understand that Their only objective is our eternal happiness and progress. They delight to help us when we ask, seek, and knock. When we exercise faith and humbly open ourselves to Their answers, we become free from the constraints of our misunderstandings and assumptions, and we can be shown the way forward.”

Personally, I think this way forward necessarily looks different for each of us. We all feel His love differently and that’s not just okay, I think that’s the way God intends. We’re each individuals with our unique talents, abilities, quirks, and hearts and we each get to establish our own relationships with God that are going to each look different. So today, as I close my message, I invite you to consider, once again, the prayer sung in the chorus of Composer Annette Dickman’s hymn: “Bread of Life, Living Water, Feed my soul, fill my heart. Give to me new life in Thee, And make me whole, complete and holy, Bound to Thee eternally.” Ask yourself how God feeds your soul and fills your heart. Ponder how you can learn to allow Him to feed your soul and fill your heart even more.