Columbia Ward Conference
Bishop Titus
2-13-11
In Malachi 3:3, 3 Nephi 24:3 and Doctrine and Covenants 128:24- we read the same verse –
"He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."
This verse puzzled some women in a study group and they wondered what this statement meant.
One of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group.
That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work.
She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver.
As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up.
He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.
The woman thought about mortality and the many difficult challenges and trials in life, and then she wondered again about the part of the verse that says," He sits as a refiner."
She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined.
The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire.
If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "How do you know when the silver is fully refined?"
He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that's easy – I can tell its ready when I see my image in it."
This Mortality –
This test,
this refiner’s fire
Is meant to be difficult.
• Those of us within the Church,
• those who have made a covenant with God,
• those of us within the kingdom make many of the same mistakes as those outside of the church, outside of the kingdom.
Just because we joined the church doesn’t mean we will not make mistakes.
These mistakes are the impurities that the refiner is burning off.
Stephen E. Robinson said:
God has anticipated that his sons and daughters within the Church and within the covenant will mess up more or less regularly, and he has provided us with a remedy when we do.
Just as faithful spouses may not be perfect and may do things that injure their partners and wound the relationship without necessarily ending the marriage, so faithful Church members are also imperfect and may do things that stress their covenant relationship with God – with out necessarily ending that relationship.
Now, Robinson is not arguing here that such mistakes are trivial or that they don’t matter. He’s only arguing that they don’t necessarily terminate the covenant.
In the Gospel covenant being faithful doesn’t mean being perfect. It just means we’re loyal to Christ, and there is no body else (no interest, cause, or loyalty ahead of him.)
In our own covenants with each other we can distinguish between being perfect on the one hand and being unfaithful on the other.
True, some evil acts violate the marriage covenant and leave it in ruins, but forgetting a wedding anniversary isn’t one of them.
Similarly, some evil acts violate the gospel covenant and put us outside the kingdom, but swearing in traffic isn’t one of them.
That is why the Lord has instructed us to meet often and partake of the sacrament – to repent of the sins he knows we commit and thus to renew or covenants.
We “renew” them because they get soiled and tattered in our day-to-day lives – because we make mistakes and need to get back to base.
Still, as long as Christ comes first in our lives, as long as we haven’t made him second to some other “love”, then we are still faithful partners, though we may need to apologize to him from time-to-time and start over in some areas of our relationship.
As long as we are in mortality, we will have the need to repent and renew our covenants regularly. But that does not mean we are unfaithful – not unless some other loyalty, some other love, has taken Christ’s place as our highest concern.
By way of illustration, perhaps you can imagine a second string soccer goalie who has average ability but who isn’t as good as the fellow who plays in front of him.
So, most of the time he just sits on the bench.
Is he off the team because he doesn’t start?
No, he’s on the team; he just isn’t the most talented member at that position right now.
Now suppose that because of injuries to the starting goalie, this second string goalie gets in the big game and he does an okay job, and his team wins – even though he allowed three goals.
Is he on the other team now because he allowed the opposition to score three times and a better goalie wouldn’t have?
When the game is over, should his teammates treat him as a traitor for his errors?
Because his limited talent worked in their favor, does the other team owe him something?
Of course not, our second string goalie may lack talent, but there is no question about his loyalty or about which team he is on.
Playing our best game and making mistakes doesn’t put us off the team.
We may sit on the bench for our mistakes – but we aren’t the enemy.
Similarly, in the church and kingdom of God some players have more talent at some positions than others; some have more strength or experience than others.
Not everyone can be relied upon to perform well at every position or in every circumstance.
That doesn’t make them unfaithful, and it doesn’t mean they are off the team.
They are merely the second string right now.
Their desire to serve Christ, to repent regularly and improve steadily, guarantees they are still in the kingdom.
They are on the right side – even if they’re not the most talented players at their position right now.
On the other hand, suppose that before the game the goalie had met with the other team and made arrangements to let them score,
to whom does he belong?
Even though his skills may even be superior, he serves a different master than his teammates serve, and his disloyalty does make him the enemy.
But just being a Klutz won’t make you the enemy.
Some of us are too quick to assume that we are second and third string players or that we are spiritual klutzes.
We forget that God, in his perfect judgment, adjust credit and blame to allow for the circumstances of the individual in question.
Life is not fair.
In the parable of the talents, it didn’t matter that one servant had been given five talents and the other only two.
What mattered most was what both servants did with what God gave them. The Master said to each of them, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant’ (Matthew 25:21)
Stephen Robinson tells this story:
Many years ago, when I was somewhere between nine and eleven, I participated in a community summer recreation program in the town where I grew up.
I remember in particular a diving competition for the different age groups held at the community swimming pool.
Some of the wealthier kids in our area had their own pools with diving board, and were pretty good amateur divers.
But there was one kid my age from the less affluent part of town who didn’t have his own pool.
What he had was raw courage.
While the rest of us did our crisp little swan dives, back dives, and jack knives, being every so careful to arch our backs and point our toes, this young man attempted back flips, one-and-a-half, doubles, and so on.
But oh, he was sloppy.
He seldom kept his feet together, and never pointed his toes, and he usually missed his vertical entry.
The rest of us observed with smug satisfaction as the judges held up their scorecards that he consistently got lower marks than we did with our safe and simple dives, and we congratulated ourselves that we were actually the better divers.
“He is all heart and no finesse,” we told ourselves. “After all, we keep our feet together and point our toes.”
The announcement of the winner was a great shock to us, for the brave young lad with the flips had apparently beaten us all.
However, I had kept a rough track of the scores in my head, and I knew that the math didn’t add up.
I consistently outscored the boy with the flips.
And so, certain that an injustice was being perpetrated, I stormed the scorer’s table and demanded and explanation.
“Degree of difficulty”, the scorer replied matter-of-factly as he looked me in the eye.
“Sure, you had better form, but he did harder dives.
When you factor in the degree of difficulty, he beat you hands down, kid.”
Until that moment I hadn’t know that some divers were awarded “extra credit’ because of their greater difficulty.
I have a friend to whom life has been unkind.
Though she married in the temple, her husband proved unfaithful and eventually abandoned her and their small children.
Since he has never paid a penny in child support, my friend works full time to support herself and her kids.
For several years she also went to school at night to improve her financial situation.
Therefore, of necessity, she could not be with her children as much as she would have liked and could not always give them the guidance and discipline they needed.
It just wasn’t possible in her difficult circumstances.
One result of her less-than-perfect family situation was troubled teenagers.
Now in middle age she is faced with raising some of her grandchildren – again, all alone.
Without a faithful companion, without the priesthood in her home, without the blessings that are realized where the ideal family setting is possible, it is almost inevitable that my friend should feel that her “scores” as a wife and mother, and perhaps even as a person, aren’t very high.
When she goes to church and sees the other “ideal” LDS families, when she hears them bear their testimonies and give thanks for all their spiritual and temporal blessings, she sees in her mind the judges holding up scorecards that say 9.9 or 10.0.
When she looks at her own life, her own failed marriage, her own troubled children, she knows that the scores are much lower, and she worries about her place in the kingdom.
Well, she needn’t worry, for she is as faithful to her covenants in her troubles as the rest of us are in our blessings.
True, there are some things she cannot do, but these are the result of her circumstances, not her choices - and where there is no choice, there can be no condemnation.
I have no doubt that when the “degree of difficulty” is factored in for the life she leads, her crown will shine brighter than many others, for God always factors into his judgment ---the “degree of difficulty”.
Whenever I am temped to feel superior to other saints, the parable of the divers comes to my mind, and I repent.
At least at a swim meet, we can usually tell which dives are the most difficult.
But here in mortality, we cannot always tell who is carrying what burdens: Learning disabilities, chemical depression, compulsive behaviors, limited intelligence, dysfunctional or abusive family background, poor health, physical or psychological handicaps – no one chooses these things.
So I must not judge my brothers and sisters.
I am thankful for my blessings but not smug about them, for I never want to hear the scorer say to me,
“Sure, you had better form, but she had a harder life. When you factor in the degree of difficulty, she beat you hands down kid.”
So, enduring to the end doesn’t have much to do with suffering in silence, overcoming all of life’s obstacles, or even achieving the LDS ideal (“pointing your toes and keeping your feet together” ).
It means not giving up.
It means keeping – to the best of our abilities – the commitment we made to Christ when we entered into the marriage of the gospel.
It means not divorcing the Savior or cheating on him by letting some other love become more important in our lives. It means not rejecting the blessings of the atonement that he showered upon us when we entered his church and kingdom.
Keep in mind that:
"He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver."
• He holds us over the fire, where it is hottest
• He never takes his eyes off us - lest we are destroyed,
• And he watches carefully for his image in us.
In the name of Jesus Christ, our redeemer
Amen
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