BENT AND BROKEN

I don't see it very often when I go into the garage, but every once in a while I glance at the mouth piece of a long ago lost dream sticking out of a broken corner of the trumpet case sitting on the top of a cabinet. The reason the mouth piece is in the trumpet is because it is stuck solid. I hadn't ever imagined that the day would come when trumpets would be built with the mouth piece permanently attached to the trumpet body and this old piece of my youthful fantasy would be in vogue. Besides the fused mouth piece, the valves are frozen in a position so as not to allow any air to flow past them and the bell of the horn is badly bent. The latter being a reminder of our eldest son’s childhood. I would like to report that the spit lever works just fine, but rendered non-functional because of the stuck valves blocking the passage of air.

Not that it will ever happen, but I have often wondered if a master craftsman might be able to put this shining piece of my youth back into operational order. I am sure that there are those who have mastered their craft to the extent that they could bring back the trumpet’s luster and restore its functions and sweet tones.

There are times in this ‘golden’ phase of life I am going through when I can really sympathize with that bent and frozen trumpet. There are days when I wonder if parts of me will ever again function in the way they were intended to, days when it almost becomes a stretch of my faith, that somehow this corruptible flesh could become incorruptible once again. (1 Corinthians 15:50-57)

As Paul indicated to the saints at Corinth, just as in the case of what would be a miraculous restoration of my trumpet, the miracle of my personal physical restoration can ultimately only come through the miracle of the Atonement wrought by the Lord and Master, Jesus the Christ.

Besides the visible part of my being there is also a larger part of me which is rarely seen by those I daily stumble past. A part of me which hopefully, unlike that part of me with frozen joints and withered muscles, if it could be seen, would seem to have much more of a glow than in earlier days when it was being bounded about by a stealthier structure.

I am well aware of the Christian teaching of the principle of repentance, which relies heavily on going through steps of penitence and I have of necessity put those steps into frequent use during my life. I am likewise grateful for the Savior and his willingness to recognize my halting repentant steps and his sacrifice in the garden of Gethsemane and on Calvary’s hill. I am also very grateful for my fragmented understanding of the Jewish teaching that our lives should be spent in preparing ourselves to return to live once again with God. This is much like looking at the Old Testament teaching ‘do not unto them,’ versus the New Testament teaching ‘do unto them’ only having the positives and negatives reversed.

Put in a simple and concise way, we can either spend our lives overcoming our evil natures or we can spend our lives putting on positive and loving attributes.

One of my all-time favorite romantic movies is ‘Somewhere in Time.’ A young writer, Richard Collier (played by Christopher Reeve), moves through time and falls in love with a beautiful young woman (played by Jane Seymour) and eventually chooses to sacrifice everything to return to her.

In our own real life drama, if I have at least begun to understand how the Master Craftsman goes about unsticking, unbending and shining us, our task has a lot to do with putting off negative aspects and putting on positive traits and, thereby, preparing to return to be with our Heavenly Father who sent us into this preparatory state.

If I close my eyes I can hear the beautiful young woman pleading that Richard return to her. Likewise, there are times when I close my eyes and hear my Heavenly Father pleadingly saying, ‘return to me.’

I suspect I have spent far too many days trying to eliminate those negative choices which have led me into sticky situations from which I needed to extract myself. I also suspect that by wiping the grime from those missteps will clean me up a bit and make me more presentable before my Heavenly Father. However, I don't think I will thereby gain the luster necessary to dwell in His glory once again.

Since the true meaning of the word Sacrifice is to make holy, I wish I had spent fewer days of my life bumping and crashing through mishaps and subsequently wiping away grime, and more of my time concentrating on thinking of ways to make myself sufficiently holy that I might be able to return to Him.

One of the beautiful things about the penitent path I have stumbled through and the speedy path provided through applying the principle of making my life a sacrifice in preparation to return to Heavenly Father not only unspotted, but holy, is coming to the understanding that everything we do in life whether it is putting off the negatives or putting on the positives, will be counted in our favor by our loving Heavenly Father whose only wish is that we be able to return.

One of the unanticipated blessings which I have gratefully received is that as my preparation to return to Him has become more of a sacrificial (making holy) process the veil of forgetting has become more of an opening curtain of remembering.