The Peacegiver

This last weekend I did something I haven't done in years...I finished a book. As most of you already know, I don't spend much time reading because I, an A Type, Red, super organizer, find it very difficult to sit down and spend what seems like 'wasted time' reading when I should be cleaning under every nook and cranny of my home or organizing the meal menu for January 2009. Well, after gradually ceasing from ignoring a small desire within to 'relax with a book' and recognizing my great desire to learn more of the Savior and his gospel, I fell upon "The Peacegiver" by James L. Ferrell. It is on "How Christ Offers to Heal Our Hearts and Homes" and James does a superb job at explaining this possibility and process. This book was so wonderful for my spirit and my understanding of Christ and The Atonement. I know that I have heard lesson after lesson on The Atonement and have been truly touched in all my many years of membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After reading this book, I would dare say, however, I have never been so intensily enlightened and educated on the full effects of The Atonement, even during my mission, as I was while reading this book. Not only did it reteach me of the importance of His Atonement, but it also taught me how Christ's selfless love for us can be such a healing power and motivator for me in my daily interactions with myself and others.

I've decided to include one of my favorite paragraphs of the book. Here the author is referring to Jonah from the Bible and how after he is unhappy as he sits on the hill after teaching the Ninevites. Here is the passage:

"Jonah is unhappy for one reason and one reason alone, and it is not the reason he thinks. Like David, he is unhappy not because of another's sins but because of his own. This understanding is available merely from pondering the Savior's atonement, for no amount of mistreatment and suffering was able to take away the love of One who was without sin. By contrast, we who still struggle with sinfulness, struggles as well to cover our sins. And one way we do this, the Savior taught, is by finding sinfulness in others. The beams in our eyes get us looking for the motes in others. Our own failure to love another causes us to see the other as being unworthy of love. So we end up sitting beneath our own canopies of sticks-irritated, angry, hurt-blaming our lack of love on the Ninevites we are failing to love. The Savior, by contrast, with no sins of his own to clutch, cover, and excuse, remained free to see all of mankind-each of us Ninevite in our sinfulness and in the pain we caused him-mercifully and gratefully."

I know that this passage may seem like a real "Duh!" statement to most of you, but it really hit me hard that we must love others because we choose to do so unconditionally as Christ has done for us and not because they have earned it by the way they do or don't treat us. Nobody earns our love, we choose to give it to them regardless, not because!

Therefore, does this mean that I must love my husband with all my heart whether or not he remembers to sufficiently celebrate mother's day and my upcoming birthday? Yes, I guess it does, wish me luck for I fear I may fail miserably!