This is the base of the talk I gave at New Beginnings a couple of weeks ago.
In Japan there is an art form known as “kintsukuroi.” It means to literally repair with gold. It is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer to make the final piece a greater work or art for having been broken.
I want you to take a moment to see how you view yourself [do it before reading on].
You may at times feel like broken pieces of pottery. You may feel that you have to make those broken pieces look just right before you can hand them to the Lord. Do not wait. He will make them beautiful. He will fuse you together with gold. I once thought that the Atonement was only for those who had major sins and because of that I waited too long to access it daily. It is through the Holy Spirit that you will feel the power of the Atonement working in your life. It will take practice, just as listening to the Spirit takes practice.
I think many of us are familiar with the concept of being cleansed from sin.
The Atonement can also be a resource of comfort in pain.
But ultimately the Atonement is what changes us.
With Christ’s help we will change our very nature. To become something more valuable and beautiful—because of His filling our gaps with gold.
Tonight I want to share with you an experience about another Stake’s New Beginning’s night. It is from the book The Uses of Adversity [by Carlfred Broderick], given to me by a dear friend who has seen her share of adversity. In the book the author describes an New Beginning's event when he was a stake president in California. The program was set up like The Wizard of Oz, complete with a yellow brick road and the buildings in Oz looked a lot like the LA temple. At the end the director, went on about her "wonderful life with her charming husbadn and her perfect children and promsied that the young women could look like her and have a husband like him and children like them if they would stick to the yellow brick road and live in Oz. It was a lovely, sort of tear-jerking event."
And then the woman conducting asked if the stake president had any final thoughts.
His reply: ". . .I do not want you to believe for one minutes that if you keep all the commandments and live as close to the Lord as you can and do everything right and fight off the entire priests quorum one by one and wait chastely for your missionary to return and pay your tithing and attend you meetings, accept calls from the bishop, and have a temple marriage, I do not want you to believe that bad things will not happen to you. And when that happens, I do not want you to say that God was not true. . . [that] they promised me from the pulpit that if I were very, very good, I would be blessed. . .Sad things—children who are sick or developmentally handicapped, husbands who are not faithful, illnesses that can cripple, or violence, betrayals, hurts, deaths, losses—when these things happen, do not say God is not keeping his promises to me. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain. It is the resource in event of pain, and when that pain comes (and it will come because we came here on earth to have pain among other things), when it comes, rejoice that you have resource to deal with the pain.”
I had an experience lately where Tim had asked , “Did you meditate this morning?” “Yes I meditated” I said through gritted teeth. I felt terrible and then I felt more terrible that I couldn’t even do it when I was trying. It is times like that when we may feel tempted to reach for something to fill us—whatever that may be—gaming, gossip, addiction, chocolate cake. I found myself empty and reaching. And rather than reaching for something that would not fill my spirit I sent up one of those deserate prayers. There was a physical feeling of warmth and comfort and I had the impression, “I will fill you.” I had been looking for things to feel the gaps. Nothing will fuse us together and make us more beautiful than our transformation than the Atonement.
[I shared many thoughts from Brad Wilcox's talk at the Women's Conference].
We do not need to walk around in broken pieces. We do not have to wait until the final judgement to utilize Christ's Atonement. "Come unto me, Come as you are. Right now. Not once you are wroth. But come now, when you are in the process of breaking bad habits. Not once you forgive, but while you are struggling to forgive." (Brad Wilcox) Christ sees you as you are and as you can become and He thinks you are beautiful.
At the beginning I asked you to see how you view yourself.
Now take a moment and feel how Christ sees you [take that moment before reading on].
If you cannot get that feeling now I challenge you to find a quiet place to ask him.
I hope we can all see each other as we can become through the Atonment. It is the power to change us, to cleanse us, to heal us and to make us beautiful. He will fill us. He will fill our cracks with gold and we will be more beautiful and valuable because of it.