Bring Healing Light into Your Life - Part One

Good Morning or Good Afternoon or Good Evening, this post focuses on highlights of a BYU (Brigham Young University) devotional speech in June 2024 and it's called "Bring Healing Light into Your Life" by Kimberly O. Jenkins. This post is part one. This post should take about five minutes to seven minutes to read from start to finish. 

Kimberly has mentioned the following;

"While attending BYU during my freshman year, I took a larger class load than maybe I should have. That semester my midterms happened to all line up in the same week. I remember attending a general education class in a large lecture hall in the Benson Building with hundreds of other students. Knowing he was giving a midterm that week, the professor started class by asking everyone to stand up if they had at least two midterms that week. 

Most of the class stood. He then asked who had at least three midterms, and many people sat down. By the time he got to six midterms, I was the only person in the room left standing. The professor pointed at me and said to the rest of the class, “See, no matter how bad your week is, her life is worse.”

I believe the professor meant to comfort everyone in that class, but I am not sure he had fully thought out how the last person left standing was going to feel. At that moment I felt so pressured and overwhelmed, wondering if I was good enough to be here at BYU. 

I know I am not the only person who has had that feeling. As President C. Shane Reese boldly emphasized: We proudly and energetically embrace our charge from prophets and apostles to “dare to be different” and to “become the BYU of prophecy.” Our students and programs consistently rank among the most competitive in thenation.

With prestige also come the pressures and self-expectations that push us to be our very best. In some situations it can also cause us to doubt if we are enough.

So how do we overcome the inadequacy we all feel at times in our lives? When life is so busy, demanding, and overwhelming, how can we find peace and purpose? How do we see God in our lives even in the darkest moments?

Today I want to speak to those who are feeling burdened or overwhelmed and share a message about the healing light that can help us find peace and purpose during challenges. I will discuss how finding this light requires being willing to work, recognizing miracles, and serving others.

Miracles Often Require Work

The first principle I want to share is that miracles often take work and patience. Elder M. Russell Ballard taught that we must do more than pray - we must act in faith. He said:

Praying for justice, peace, the poor, and the sick is often not enough. After we kneel in prayer, we need to get up from our knees and do what we can to help—to help both ourselves and others. ... 

With limited funding and only four weeks until the launch, they had to quickly find a solution. The team of faculty and students immediately got to work. They tried everything, but where a miracle was needed, all they seemed to find were more unanswered questions.

... In the students’ struggles there came growth, learning, and insight. ... As Professor Kent L. Gee later remarked about the experience: ... The Lord didn’t make it easy, but He certainly made it possible. I don’t know that the Lord cares about rockets, but He cares about the BYU students and who they are becoming. This experience convinced me of that.

Similarly, it is not always an instantaneous process to let light into our lives. It is more of a process requiring effort and action. It takes trying and then trying again. And it is going to work a little differently for each of us. ... the scriptures teach that Jesus Christ “is the light and the life of the world; yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened.”

It can seem too simplistic for me to say, “Let that light shine upon you.” I get it - there are moments when we all feel as if we are standing there, our arms outstretched, thinking, “I have my SPF 100 on; I’m ready for the light. Where is it?”

Just like the brother of Jared, though, sometimes the way we let light shine in our lives isn’t the way we might have originally planned. Often the Lord requires us to take action. He asks that we walk the beach, come up with ideas, collect rocks, and then come to Him in humility, asking for help.

I promise every single one of you, no matter your situation, that the Lord can provide a way for His light to fill your life. You are enough, and He will help you.

"It's not always an instantaneous process to let light 
into our lives. It's more of a process requiring effort
and action."

Recognizing Miracles

The second principle is that sometimes miracles are subtle, and we might miss them if we aren’t looking. When we think of miracles, it is easy to think of the big stories, such as those we see in the New Testament: the feeding of the five thousand, the blind men who received their sight, and the young woman who was brought back to life. It can be easy to miss the more subtle miracles.

As part of my job here at BYU, I introduce many important people to BYU’s College of Computational, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences. One of my favorite facilities to show them is the BYU anechoic chamber. This research space has special foam pyramids on the walls, ceiling, and floor. All this padding blocks most of the echoes and sound reverberation in the room.

When you walk in, the background noise of everyday life is cut out. You don’t hear cars driving on the street, air flowing through vents, or even the faint hum of the building’s electricity. It is a new level of silence that most people have never experienced. As you stand in the room, you start to notice noises that used to be imperceptible. 

You might notice your breathing, your stomach gurgling, or even the sound of your heartbeat in your ears. Those noises were always there, but without the distractions of everyday sounds, they are now perceptible. By removing all the ambient noise, the anechoic chamber allows researchers to better measure and understand the sound of whatever they are studying.

Similarly, you and I are surrounded by miracles, but we might not always see them because we are distracted by all the other things going on in our lives. You will notice in the New Testament stories that when Jesus Christ performed a miracle, He often told the recipient that they had been forgiven of their sins. Perhaps He did this because He doesn’t want us to forget the very miraculous nature of the gifts you and I are blessed with every day.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ means that we all can be forgiven of our sins. As a very imperfect person who frequently makes mistakes, I can attest to what a miracle that is. The Atonement of Jesus Christ also gives us strength. As Elder David A. Bednar said, “The enabling power of the Atonement of Christ strengthens us to do things we could never do on our own.”

Pay attention to the miracles in your life. While we are all here having a very human experience full of trials, disappointments, grief, fear, and pain, we can also feel joy and peace in those moments. We are all blessed with miracles. God is constantly telling us that we can do this, but it sometimes takes a spiritual anechoic chamber for us to hear Him."

I would like to encourage you to look forward to the next post because the next post will be continuing highlights from the same devotional speech. 

Stay Tuned.