"Wherefore, he will bring them again out of captivity, and they shall be gathered together to the lands of their inheritance; and tehy shall be brought out of obscurity and out of darkness; and they shall know that the Lord is their Savior and their Redeemer, the Mighty One of Israel."
This idea of bringing them out of captivity...again it is spiritual and temporal. It is literal and physical. There is the prophecy about the Savior coming to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and literally saving the people, for one off the top of my head. It is also literal and spiritual in nature. If I think of my sins or my errors are my captors, He leads me out of them by the lovely healing process that Isaiah teaches. And after healing takes place and there is space in my heart for something other than my false beliefs, He tenderly helps us come to understanding and helps us to learn doctrine (Isaiah 29:24 "They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmured shall learn doctrine."). We then can truly claim our hearts - or the land of our inheritance. When we have intentional and honest knowledge of our hearts, we are able to freely choose life and know that what we are choosing is a real choice - even if it doesn't turn out the way we wish.
The land of my inheritance, being brought out of darkness, knowing the Lord is my Savior and my Redeemer...all of this speaks to healing spiritually to me. I see it day after day as I work with people. In their eyes they carry so much and when they have finished a session, the light in their eye is a little brighter. The scales of darkness have fallen from their eyes, at least in part. Or as Paul refers to it, they were seeing through a glass darkly. Whatever phrase is used really doesn't matter. The point is that we come out of obscurity and out of darkness. We learn to see things as they really are because those false beliefs are no longer our frame of reference.
Then we come to Doctrine and Covenants 84:45 "For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ." Again literal both physically and spiritually. As a person heals, the heart and the eyes change. Physically and spiritually. The eyes have a light in them. And when that person looks at life and situations, they do not see things through a glass darkly, but they see clearly and understand situations as they really are.
"And the blood of that great and abominable church, which is the whore of all the earth, shall turn upon their own heads; for they shall war among themselves, and the sword of their own hands shall fall upon their own heads, and they shall be drunken with their own blood. And every nation which shall war against thee, O house of Israel, shall be turned one against another, and they shall fall into the pit which they digged to ensnare the people of the Lord. And all that fight against Zion (Isaiah 29:7-8) shall be destroyed, and that great whore, who hath perverted the ways of the Lord, yea, that great and abominable church, shall tumble to the dust and great shall be the fall of it."
Again taking the physical and the spiritual understanding of this. The "whore of all the earth" is that which leads away from God and from Jesus Christ as the Savior and Redeemer of the world. That is literal - there are many on this earth who would like to do away with any Christian. It is spiritual - there are many false beliefs within us that keep us from truly allowing Christ to change us into a new creature. Once again it comes down to that battle ground within our hearts. There is a part of me that wants to pursue that which is good and light and leads to Christ. There is another part of me that wants to pursue selfish interests, personal gain, or simply wants to be lazy. The one is trying to overcome the other. The light through continuous invitation to truth and the other through all other kinds of enticements, deceptions, and even deceiving me so I think I do not have a choice.
Fighting against Zion, in the spiritual sense, is all within my heart. I fight Zion when I reserve a part of my heart from the Lord...any part of my heart. Isaiah calls them my "strangers" and my "terrible ones", those parts of me that are completely unknown to myself and those parts of me that I judge so deeply that I would never breathe them allowed to another living soul for fear they would forever condemn me to be a horrible person. But in those moments I just need to remember the truth of Proverbs 17:9 - when a conversation happens in truth and is real, it invites friendship. But the facade is only because I am seeking to be seen as xyz because I'm believing that I have to be that in order to be loved. Silliness. This is what I am learning to heal within my heart. Being back in Snowflake is very hard in this way - I find I instinctively want to slide back into old habits that I learned to use in order to survive growing up in this town. It is hard to retain the knowledge and truth I have because 18 years of training tries to kick in and tell me that if I don't fit the mold I will be mocked, ridiculed, shut-out, teased, judged, etc. It is a daily battle to show up and be real and not let the what Snowflake used to be to me become that things again. It is a daily battle to keep my heart open and share with those around me, even if they are caught off guard by it or confused by it and don't know how to take me or what to do with me.
Being open is the most important thing I can do. It allows the Lord to establish Zion within my heart. It cannot be established in any other way. So, no matter the looks or how I interpret those looks, I have to remember that I know truth and that I know there is no other way that brings happiness and joy into my life. It goes back to the thought I have always loved by Emerson.
"Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?"
This is the difference between verse 12 and verses 13-14. To be sincere, even when others are around - to be as sincere with them as I am when I am by myself - this is courage and freedom and stepping out of darkness and allowing others to see me for who I truly am. This is integrity of the highest sort. Not to say that I should show them the struggle or the natural man (pride, anger, etc.) but that I should be who I am without hiding. When I desire to say something and stop myself for fear of being misunderstood or for fear of being judged...that is allowing the darkness to keep me captive. That is closing my heart. That is literally fighting against Zion. To share what is truly within me - not to share the layers of habit but to share my true heart, not my reactions to others only who I really and truly am, this is at once terrifying and exhilarating. It causes both panic and peace. Until I have shared enough of myself often enough that I know the person I am speaking with will not judge but instead will listen with love and with a desire to also share honestly. I currently have one friend, in the whole wide world, with whom I have this kind of truthfulness. But this kind of honesty is what Zion looks like - not the ugly reaction we may have to others, but the truth of what is underneath the reactions - communication like this brings about healing, opening of the heart, and allowing us to see and understand in new ways. This kind of communication allows us to build Zion, little by little. Until one day there is a wholeness, a real integrity within each heart and we are all bound because we have not sought to hide but instead sought to share and to heal and to help each other and to love. This is the training ground for Zion.
This idea of bringing them out of captivity...again it is spiritual and temporal. It is literal and physical. There is the prophecy about the Savior coming to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and literally saving the people, for one off the top of my head. It is also literal and spiritual in nature. If I think of my sins or my errors are my captors, He leads me out of them by the lovely healing process that Isaiah teaches. And after healing takes place and there is space in my heart for something other than my false beliefs, He tenderly helps us come to understanding and helps us to learn doctrine (Isaiah 29:24 "They also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding, and they that murmured shall learn doctrine."). We then can truly claim our hearts - or the land of our inheritance. When we have intentional and honest knowledge of our hearts, we are able to freely choose life and know that what we are choosing is a real choice - even if it doesn't turn out the way we wish.
The land of my inheritance, being brought out of darkness, knowing the Lord is my Savior and my Redeemer...all of this speaks to healing spiritually to me. I see it day after day as I work with people. In their eyes they carry so much and when they have finished a session, the light in their eye is a little brighter. The scales of darkness have fallen from their eyes, at least in part. Or as Paul refers to it, they were seeing through a glass darkly. Whatever phrase is used really doesn't matter. The point is that we come out of obscurity and out of darkness. We learn to see things as they really are because those false beliefs are no longer our frame of reference.
Then we come to Doctrine and Covenants 84:45 "For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ." Again literal both physically and spiritually. As a person heals, the heart and the eyes change. Physically and spiritually. The eyes have a light in them. And when that person looks at life and situations, they do not see things through a glass darkly, but they see clearly and understand situations as they really are.
"And the blood of that great and abominable church, which is the whore of all the earth, shall turn upon their own heads; for they shall war among themselves, and the sword of their own hands shall fall upon their own heads, and they shall be drunken with their own blood. And every nation which shall war against thee, O house of Israel, shall be turned one against another, and they shall fall into the pit which they digged to ensnare the people of the Lord. And all that fight against Zion (Isaiah 29:7-8) shall be destroyed, and that great whore, who hath perverted the ways of the Lord, yea, that great and abominable church, shall tumble to the dust and great shall be the fall of it."
Again taking the physical and the spiritual understanding of this. The "whore of all the earth" is that which leads away from God and from Jesus Christ as the Savior and Redeemer of the world. That is literal - there are many on this earth who would like to do away with any Christian. It is spiritual - there are many false beliefs within us that keep us from truly allowing Christ to change us into a new creature. Once again it comes down to that battle ground within our hearts. There is a part of me that wants to pursue that which is good and light and leads to Christ. There is another part of me that wants to pursue selfish interests, personal gain, or simply wants to be lazy. The one is trying to overcome the other. The light through continuous invitation to truth and the other through all other kinds of enticements, deceptions, and even deceiving me so I think I do not have a choice.
Fighting against Zion, in the spiritual sense, is all within my heart. I fight Zion when I reserve a part of my heart from the Lord...any part of my heart. Isaiah calls them my "strangers" and my "terrible ones", those parts of me that are completely unknown to myself and those parts of me that I judge so deeply that I would never breathe them allowed to another living soul for fear they would forever condemn me to be a horrible person. But in those moments I just need to remember the truth of Proverbs 17:9 - when a conversation happens in truth and is real, it invites friendship. But the facade is only because I am seeking to be seen as xyz because I'm believing that I have to be that in order to be loved. Silliness. This is what I am learning to heal within my heart. Being back in Snowflake is very hard in this way - I find I instinctively want to slide back into old habits that I learned to use in order to survive growing up in this town. It is hard to retain the knowledge and truth I have because 18 years of training tries to kick in and tell me that if I don't fit the mold I will be mocked, ridiculed, shut-out, teased, judged, etc. It is a daily battle to show up and be real and not let the what Snowflake used to be to me become that things again. It is a daily battle to keep my heart open and share with those around me, even if they are caught off guard by it or confused by it and don't know how to take me or what to do with me.
Being open is the most important thing I can do. It allows the Lord to establish Zion within my heart. It cannot be established in any other way. So, no matter the looks or how I interpret those looks, I have to remember that I know truth and that I know there is no other way that brings happiness and joy into my life. It goes back to the thought I have always loved by Emerson.
"Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man, who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliment and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading-rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plaindealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?"
This is the difference between verse 12 and verses 13-14. To be sincere, even when others are around - to be as sincere with them as I am when I am by myself - this is courage and freedom and stepping out of darkness and allowing others to see me for who I truly am. This is integrity of the highest sort. Not to say that I should show them the struggle or the natural man (pride, anger, etc.) but that I should be who I am without hiding. When I desire to say something and stop myself for fear of being misunderstood or for fear of being judged...that is allowing the darkness to keep me captive. That is closing my heart. That is literally fighting against Zion. To share what is truly within me - not to share the layers of habit but to share my true heart, not my reactions to others only who I really and truly am, this is at once terrifying and exhilarating. It causes both panic and peace. Until I have shared enough of myself often enough that I know the person I am speaking with will not judge but instead will listen with love and with a desire to also share honestly. I currently have one friend, in the whole wide world, with whom I have this kind of truthfulness. But this kind of honesty is what Zion looks like - not the ugly reaction we may have to others, but the truth of what is underneath the reactions - communication like this brings about healing, opening of the heart, and allowing us to see and understand in new ways. This kind of communication allows us to build Zion, little by little. Until one day there is a wholeness, a real integrity within each heart and we are all bound because we have not sought to hide but instead sought to share and to heal and to help each other and to love. This is the training ground for Zion.
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