In 1997 President James Hamula was my mission president for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was called to that role when he was 36 years-old. He and his young family left a fledging job, packed up their West Coast home and moved to across the country. For three years, they served and taught in the Washington DC area. Not only did they become surrogate parents to the 200 young missionaries, but they also had twins on their mission, because as they said, “everything comes in pairs.” Their dedicated service did not end with their missionary work: They gave their lives to God. After twenty years, I still proudly consider him my mission president. Last week’s news from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave me pause to consider the challenges of mortality and the Christian ideals; such as, hope, forgiveness, and love that carry us through.
We are each human. As Christ so beautifully admonishes in John 8:7, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” I certainly do not what to stand in judgement of another’s life. I do not want to determine what my neighbor’s experience should be or what it’s value is. Instead, I struggle to be more Godly through loving my sister and giving compassion to my bother.
As I wrestled anew with the meaning and purpose of life and questioned why there is so much pain, heartache, and transgression I recalled the Old Testament story of Jonah and the Whale. From the Old Testament, many of us are familiar with Jonah’s repeated sin of disobedience. We are familiar with his life’s darkest moments, being cast to sea and subsequently swallowed by whale. It doesn’t get much bleaker than that. However, despite all of it Jonah made it back home. Despite living three days and nights the darkest belly of a whale, despite asking to be killed rather complete God’s command, Jonah still fulfilled his purpose. Although, he traveled to Joppa and took a boat to Tarshish, jumped ship and survived the belly of a whale, he ended in Nineveh. His purpose complete. Despite his sin, shortcoming, and lack of faith Jonah fulfilled his purpose and did it smashingly.
I don’t know if you are like me, but I have had long periods of life when I felt desperately off course. I didn’t know if I was headed to Joppa, Tarshish, or anywhere in between. Jonah is both prophet and a kind of everyman. He is fraught with the limitations and beauties of being human. He ran from difficulty only to find greater difficulty. He took short cuts only to discover that the road wasn’t any shorter. Each of us will have a belly of the whale day, week or even year. The measure of our lives cannot be how long we suffer in the darkness but rather what we do once we are out? In life, there is no direct route guarantee. Traffic and turbulence, not typically accounted for, but present nonetheless.
Rather than get hung up on Jonah’s many failed attempts to save the people of Nineveh, I see God’s tireless efforts to guide and teach Jonah everything he needed for his mortal journey. And Jonah did it. In the end, Jonah was incredibly successful in Nineveh. I believe, it was in part, his long journey and the troubled waters that gave him the grit and experience to get the job done. Nineveh was no picnic. There was a reason Jonah fled repeatedly. God was going to blow the city off the map, yet with words, love and experience Jonah saved them all. His story reminds me of the universal struggle of being human and the absolute necessity of divine forgiveness. Each of us wants to be something more, but often we are limited by the flesh: Fear, temptation, and doubt. Yet Jonah reminds me that if we don’t give up on God he won’t give up on us. Jonah teaches me the power of experience. And the beauty of second chances.
In my late twenties, I did not plan on losing a child at 14 weeks. I wasn’t prepared for waking up in the middle of the night with searing pain, walking down to my basement alone and watch my child fall to the ground. However, this one experience has connected me to many women who suffer far greater pain than I did. In my pain, I had a small glimpse of theirs—A small Gethsemane. My pain endowed me with experience and it created empathy.
We are each human. Not one of us here, prophet, leader, or me, is free from the heartache, pain or temptation of the flesh. Not one of us is immune from earthly experience. My prayer is that through our collective experiences we grow more like our God in heaven: loving, just, compassionate and forgiving. No one save Jesus Christ, our Savior, is perfect. At some point in our lives we have been at both the receiving and giving end of pain. We both hurt another and we are hurt in return. I cannot remember where I heard this, but it has stuck with me: Should not the measure of sin be in the amount of pain it inflicts. Just as love is a measure of forgiveness might not pain be the barometer of transgression.
Love, not judgment, is the most Godly act we share on earth. Here we are, each of us, standing knee deep in mortality whether we acknowledge it or not. We all share the common experience of human imperfection. Right now, many of us may be marooned in Joppa, stranded on a boat to Tarshish, or stuck in our own dark belly of a whale, but the journey is not through. Let our sin and the sins of others give us more compassion. May our experience broaden our perspectives. President Hinckley, a deceased prophet of the LDS Church, teaches, “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” Take respite in a whale. Detour in Joppa, but don’t lose hope. “If it’s not Ok, it’s not the end.”