I have looked at my life and have seen miracle after miracle daily in my life. They are small, but meaningful. I counted 8 miracles on Sunday alone and that all started after 2pm. It was amazing. I wrote about them in my journal. A few are too personal to share on my blog, but I am amazed at how many miracles happen daily in my life. As I look for them, they are right in view! I have to keep thinking of them and how they are significant.
Well, this morning I was reading a talk by President Monson "Consider the blessings" Conference October 2012
http://www.lds.org/ensign/2012/11/consider-the-blessings?lang=eng
He made me think today as I was reading it, that the miracles that happen in our daily lives, aren't just happenstance. They are because we need them, but that as we look for them, we will find more and more. That has been the case with me. I feel like I have seen so many miracles as I have consciously looked for them and thought of them as such. I believe in miracles daily.
As I have reviewed the past 49 years, I have made some discoveries. One is that countless experiences I have had were not necessarily those one would consider extraordinary. In fact, at the time they transpired, they often seemed unremarkable and even ordinary. And yet, in retrospect, they enriched and blessed lives—not the least of which was my own. I would recommend this same exercise to you—namely, that you take an inventory of your life and look specifically for the blessings, large and small, you have received.
In my Sunday School class, I taught them this quote that I learned about years ago as an EFY counselor.
"God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs"
(Spencer W. Kimball "The Abundant Life," Tambuli, Jun 1979, 3).
God has the power to do His work by Himself, but He allows us to help because of the fantastic feeling we get when we serve. I'm pretty sure that we need that fantastic feeling to get us through our hard times. At the beginning of a really hard day for me, last Monday, December 31, 2012 (New Year's Eve is significant to me for so many reasons), I opened up the conference Ensign and found the talk "Trial of Your Faith" by Elder Neil L. Anderson http://www.lds.org/ensign/2012/11/trial-of-your-faith?lang=eng Just from the title I knew it might be something I needed to read, but didn't want to read, because sometimes it's easier to stay focused on the problem, than actually deal with it and try to figure out how to move on with it as a building block of faith. Well, I started reading this talk that had been placed right in front of me as specifically as if the Lord had done it Himself (probably did!) and the part that stuck out to me was how to deal with a trial of faith. I was experiencing a trial of faith right then and thought, okay, then how do I get through it? And there was the answer. Not necessarily the answer I wanted, but the answer that I knew could come if I worked and did my part. It said, "How do you remain “steadfast and immovable”6 during a trial of faith? You immerse yourself in the very things that helped build your core of faith: you exercise faith in Christ, you pray, you ponder the scriptures, you repent, you keep the commandments, and you serve others."
So there I was thinking easy:
1. Exercise faith in Christ by Praying ( I had done that)
2. Pondering the scriptures ( I was doing that)
3. Repent (Needed to do that, then did it with a more humble heart)
4. Keep the commandments (was always working on doing that)
5, Serve others (This is where all my miracles came about! I had miracle after miracle, with my miracle "serving cookies" and they just kept coming)
I am here to say that miracles happen everyday and if we are willing to do what the Lord wants us to do, then we are going to be blessed for sure. I know it to be true. And as we do, our lives will increase in faith and be firmer in the convictions that we know are true. I know we will be able to fight the storms that come, because the foundation we have set is a solid one. I'm working it the best I can. I'm doing the baby steps and the bigger steps as I progress and thanking the Lord and recognizing His miraculous hand in my life daily, multiple times; a lot more than I even know. I know He lives and loves me and that all of His children are blessed with what the good Lord sees fit to give us, because as we all grow, we are all strong and challenged in our own way and we can become what we need to daily as we lean on Him. I'm leaning everyday, if I didn't, I couldn't arise and shine daily! Thank goodness for new days and new experiences and daily miracles!
