Sabbath Devotional :: Preserve the Relationship

relationship - Mormon Women for Ethical Government — .

I had the privilege to grow up in a lovely ward filled with sincerely good people. Two of them were Marjorie and Gordon Hinckley. Because they were people of great humility and good sense, and probably because my parents were too, to me they just blended in. Sister Hinckley stands out in my childhood memory not as someone I knew to be important, but simply as someone I remember as being fun, warm, and very kind. It is perhaps because of these qualities that six of her words, spoken in a sacrament meeting, have stayed with me for decades. They were simply this: “Above all else, preserve the relationship.”

The gospel of Jesus Christ is basically a call to enter into and preserve complex relationships. Its teachings declare the measureless worth of souls and encourage us to develop our relationship with God. His expectations for that relationship are high. Each of us is asked to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matt 22:37). This love requires multitudes from us: allegiance, obedience, sacrifice, and humility; and this is just the starting point. It asks us to both honor our own divine natures while recognizing our brokeness. We must see ourselves in all our glory while also working to remake ourselves in His image. When we work to love God first, we wrap ourselves in perspective, blessings, protections, and hope. This relationship is complicated and requires work, but it bears immediate fruit.

Then we are asked to go one step further — to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This second commandment encompasses our relationships with all the human beings with whom we will have contact as we walk the earth. And these relationships are where the six-word reminder is so critical, simply because they can be so challenging! (At least for me.) But there is also no question that these relationships can be a source of immense pleasure and joy. And for good and for ill, they provide us with our most prominent opportunity for personal growth. Character cannot develop independently of other children of God. We exercise our spiritual muscles in the push and pull of human interaction. If we want to grow beyond our own inherent limitations and weaknesses, we must seek out and preserve relationships with others.

Sister Hinckley’s words have probably mattered so much to me over the years precisely because they were accompanied by the force of the Spirit that marks truth. And her words have come back to me in pivotal moments when I needed to make decisions about how to react to people I love, particularly in moments of tension and strain. This has been true both when a relationship mattered very much to me personally, or simply when that relationship was mine by stewardship. In those moments, her admonition reminded me to react with humility and care. In the (very) frequent moments when I have failed to do so, they have also reminded me to seek forgiveness and to make restitution.

Those six words have led me to an ever deeper understanding of the nature of God and the way he works with us in a fallen world. As I have tried to observe them, I have been repeatedly struck by how the gospel orders us in a way that increases our proximity to others. We are organized in congregations, families, ministering relationships, and through countless other connection points — and then given the imperative to serve. This idea of preserving our connections to others is even woven through our covenants. Each of them, as well as so many of our binding teachings (like the Word of Wisdom), has two distinct elements. One that has us act for ourselves, and a second that asks us to act with the interest of others in mind. In other words, with every covenant, the Lord offers a promise contingent both on our willingness to be bound to him and to act in the service of others. And not just any others — those with whom we have connective relationships.

In recent months Sister Hinckley’s words have come back to me with increasing force as I have tried to reorder my life so that I can serve more effectively both as a citizen of the world and of the Kingdom of God. Those efforts have pushed me out of my comfort zone and into sometimes contentious environments. They have asked me to love more deeply, to act peacefully, to take the long view of souls and situations. And they have driven me to keep working when I wanted to quit. Our peace, within both country and Kingdom, is linked to the depth and health of our relationships with our brothers and sisters. We all must do our part to preserve them.

This week, I would ask each of us to consider the state of our relationships. Which need work? Which need mending? What can we give up in order to prioritize the ones that matter most? What can we change in ourselves that will preserve what is fracturing? How can we look at other children of God in new ways that make them precious enough in our eyes so that they seem worth the costs of connection? What can we do to become “repairer(s) of the breach” (Isaiah 58:12)?

As we try to become more than we are, and serve others beyond our limited capacity to do so, the most empowering relationship is certainly also the most precious. That is the relationship we each must have with our Savior. He is the perfect exemplar of this work of connection and preservation. I am grateful not only for the example of relationship building that He has set for me, and the strength that He offers to me when I cannot do that work on my own, but most profoundly for the grace and redemption that He gives when my efforts fall short. Without His help, none of us could do the enormous work encompassed in those six small words. But that work is critical, and every day it becomes more so. I am certain that with His help, we can all do our part to connect with and preserve the bonds among our Heavenly Parents’ children. These are relationships worth preserving.