Sabbath Devotional :: Navigating the Now — and Planning for the After

Has anyone figured this out yet? How to make Now work?

We all knew what to do in the Before. Even if there were lots of days when I didn’t like Before, I understood it. I could walk its well-worn paths without needing to pay much attention to the obstacles, vistas, or valleys. But Before is gone, and given how solid and permanent it seemed at the time, it went away surprisingly quickly! So I am figuring out Now along with the rest of you, and while we need to understand Now and make it work, it is still both weird and temporary, because though it feels interminable it isn’t. After will be here before we know it.

Once the Now stopped keeping me up at night, I found myself waking in the wee hours to wonder about that After. Because it turns out that no matter how familiar and comfortable Before was, I don’t really want to go completely back to it. Do you? I am realizing I don’t want all the people I love — my family, my friends, my congregation, and my communities — to live there anymore. In hindsight, it had some issues. Some big issues. And I would very much like for us all to start to move beyond them.

Gratefully, it didn’t take too many sleepless nights for me to realize that God had already given me a paradigm to use as I started to map the new landscape. And so, I have been thinking about Zion and what it has to offer me and mine. With the world a little bit broken, I find that my heart has broken, too, and with my spirit contrite I am suddenly open to new ways of thinking and doing. I find myself impatiently shaking off old perspectives and worldly constructs. I want a world that is centered on true principles and celestial ideals. In the quiet it has been easier to hear God, and I want less of the worldly in my world.

One realization that has provided me with immeasurable comfort in recent days (particularly in the face of great temporal and financial uncertainty) is the understanding that what matters most to me in terms of After are things that were always completely within my reach. Zion was always within my reach. But I wasn’t grabbing for it — maybe because my hands and heart were too full of other things that mattered less. This realization fills me with a little bit of shame, but mostly just gratitude for a patient and loving God, and a new brightness of hope. Building Zion is actually within my control (in a world where precious little is), and it comforts me to know there is something better after this, if we decide together that we want it.

Last night I was reading in section 58 of the Doctrine and Covenants and particularly took note of verses 2–7. The Lord is clearly talking to a people who are perplexed by the now and cannot see the after, so it drew me in:

2. For verily I say unto you, blessed is he that keepeth my commandments, whether in life or in death; and he that is faithful in tribulation, the reward of the same is greater in the kingdom of heaven.
3. Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation.
4. For after much tribulation come the blessings. Wherefore the day cometh that ye shall be crowned with much glory; the hour is not yet, but is nigh at hand.
5. Remember this, which I tell you before, that you may lay it to heart, and receive that which is to follow.
6. Behold, verily I say unto you, for this cause I have sent you—that you might be obedient, and that your hearts might be prepared to bear testimony of the things which are to come;
7. And also that you might be honored in laying the foundation, and in bearing record of the land upon which the Zion of God shall stand;

I wrote down a few questions that came to mind as I read:

What commandments should I be doing better at keeping during this time?
How can I learn to rely less on seeing with “my natural eyes”?
What am I being prepared to bear testimony of to my later self, my children, or my community?
What is my role in laying the foundation for a new land?

In section 58 the Lord is offering his perplexed saints his vision of the extraordinary things just beyond their view and is asking them to walk in faith toward that destination. The questions I wrote while reading are helping me think about what I am doing to develop that kind of active faith in a scary situation. We are all being asked to do that right now, so at least there is comfort in numbers. There is also power in those numbers, and right now I would like to have hope and faith that in the middle of an extraordinary crisis we may also have the opportunity to work together to become a transitional generation, one that begins in earnest the work of building Zion. Not in an abstract way, but very concretely. Through countless life choices and generous consecration of our resources. That is an After that I would love to see.

Do you hope After will be a different land? Do you feel yourself being pulled to open your heart to things of the spirit? What questions are you feeling called to answer? What does Zion have to offer you and people you care about? I’d love to hear.