His Heart's Got Ears

I'm a church-goer. I love being a church-goer. I love being religious in my religion, which is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've been a religious church-goer all my life. I just did the math, and according to my calculations, I've attended Sunday services nearly 1,450 times. And I plan to keep watching that number grow.

So. Fourteen hundred & fifty times. Who in the world would've thunked that today's Sunday services, out of all those other gazillions of services I've gone to, would be my favorite? If today's are not actually my all-time favorite, they're positively in my Top 3 Favorites, if I were to have a "Top 3 Favorites" list.

Okay okay, fine, I'll finally tell you why I loved church today so much. Good criminy, it wasn't even my own congregation that I normally go to, where I know almost everyone. I was visiting another congregation of my faith, a congregation where I knew almost no one. But what was splendid was that I still felt very welcome there, among all those strangers, and I felt the same peace and joy and enrichment that I feel when I attend my own congregation. Today, however, that peace and joy and enrichment were all part of an entirely different league. It was off the charts. It was terrific.

A lady named Kiersten noticed me a few minutes before church started, and she invited me to sit with her. She said she usually likes to sit clear up in the front of the chapel near the pulpit. And usually I don't particularly care to sit clear up there, so I frequently don't, but today I sat with Kiersten in the second row, center set of pews (our chapels typically have left, center, and right sets of pews).

I situated myself on the far left-hand side of the bench, which caused me to be in extremely close proximity to the front row of the left set of pews. On that row sat a man who was deaf. He sat next to one interpreter, and another interpreter sat a small number of feet in front of them, on a chair, facing them. The interpreter on the chair was approximately five feet away from me, at my eleven o'clock.

The two interpreters tag-teamed. The first one was a pretty young woman with brown hair, very nice teeth (I notice teeth, okay? I come from a dentistry family!), a lovely smile, and a way cute skirt.

The second was a handsome young man with a genuine and gentle countenance...and a nice turquoise sweater. He interpreted the hymns that were sung, and the two certain prayers that always take place in the middle of the meeting. She interpreted the opening and closing prayers, as well as the talks that were given.

I couldn't take my eyes off either of the interpreters, whenever they were sitting on the chair. I tried to make my staring not too terribly awkward. I was so fascinated in learning how to say words in American Sign Language (ASL). Not only that, but I felt the spirit of God --- the Holy Ghost --- so sweetly in my heart, even sweeter than most times I'd ever felt it in my life.

The Holy Ghost taught me something so special in that meeting, as I was focusing on the interpreters. It all really started when I focused on the second interpreter while he led the second hymn. It happens to be one of my favorite hymns. It's #169 in the current hymnal. It always touches my soul to sing it, but when I saw the second interpreter sing it with his hands, it made me pay more attention to the lyrics than I ever had before, and it made the message even more powerful and uplifting to me than ever before. His hands sang it so beautifully. I cried.

Then it was time for the first interpreter to sit in the chair again. It was time for the talks. I generally do a good job paying attention to church talks, but today I paid attention in a totally different way. I hardly ever looked up to my two o'clock to the person at the pulpit. Rather, I kept my eyes on the hands and the face at my eleven o'clock, five feet away from me. Again, I hope I didn't creep her out too much, because I seriously did stare at her for pretty much the whole time she sat in the chair.

The talks consisted of much talk about Heavenly Father, His Son Jesus Christ, Christ's Atonement, faith, repentance, endurance, obedience to God's laws, and blessings that God gives His children whenever they do obey. For lack of a better adjective, it was so sweet to watch the first interpreter's hands talking about these holy topics. It was like nobody in the history of mankind had ever talked about those things as kindly and earnestly as these two interpreters did today.

Needless to say I was just all-in-all quite moved by what I saw during the duration of the meeting (sometimes I even kept my eyes wide open during the prayers, just so I could hear the prayers in ASL). I felt Heavenly Father's and Christ's love for me fresh within me, and I learned something too. Oh yeah! I meant to tell you what I learned from the Holy Ghost three whole stinkin' paragraphs ago! Here goes nothin':

I learned that God has a way of speaking to every one of His children. Usually hymn #169's message reaches me through my ears and plants itself firmly inside my mind and heart. But today it reached me through my eyes, by way of the second interpreter's hand gestures and tender facial expressions. The message reached me loud and clear, as it normally does through sound. But today, it reached me loud and clear in the same loud and clear way it reaches the man whose ears don't function the same way mine do. His heart's got ears --- ears that work perfectly. I looked back at him and the young woman interpreter during the closing hymn (#250 in the current hymnal). They were singing together with their hands. There was a bright and wonderful glow about them. "Happy [were they], happy [were they]." I could tell the song was bringing them cheer.

This was nuttin' but a whole bunch of rambling, but I just had to write it all down. To whomever just read this, congratulations for making it through! I can show you how to say "endure" in ASL, if you'd like! ;)

Slanderer Repellant

In Old English it's deofol. In Now English it's devil.

The Saxons called it diuval, and the Greeks possibly started it with their διάβολος (diabolos), meaning "the slanderer."

Several years ago at Brigham Young University – Idaho, I took a Media Law & Ethics class. For reasons unknown, the most memorable lesson from that class, for me, was the one about the difference between libel and slander. They both basically mean "to defame someone," but libel does it through writing, and slander does it through speaking.

I think the Now English word still holds true to its original Greek definition, and that the following statement is correct:

"If the devil is the slanderer, thus being a defamer, and he is everybody's adversary, then his mission is to try to defame everybody, implicating that everybody's got some 'fame' to begin with."

The "fame" that everybody's got… I really do believe that everybody in the world has something very special about them. Everybody's got a special light somewhere inside.

Granted, that may sound cheesier than the biggest cauldron of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese ever brewed, but I said what I meant and meant what I said.

How does a singular person get to be defamed by the slanderer? It happens when a bad little birdie whispers "you're not good-looking enough" into your ear and you buy it. It happens when you get the stinking inkling that you're a doomed and rotten person just because you make mistakes. It happens when something warps your judgment into deeming it nobler and far more dignified to not forgive someone, than to forgive.

The slanderer slanders in sly and tiny ways. It certainly takes effort on our part to keep our lights bright and our slanderer repellant fresh on our skins, but it can be done. I am definitely not constantly free of all slanderer sludge, but I can recommend the following repellant brands that I've put to the test:

-Being honest and maintaining integrity

-Being kind in deed and in thought to others and to yourself

-Striving patiently to keep self-improvement a priority

-Making and working towards righteous goals

In my life, I've discovered that my prime success tool is remembering I'm a child of God, that there's a way I can communicate with Him and stay close to Him, and that He loves me and longs to offer His help whenever I need it.

The devilish defamer is everybody's adversary, and his mission is to drag down as many of us as he can. But guess what. As many of us who have διάβολος for an arch nemesis, also have God—who is our Heavenly Father—for a greatest ally. Each of us is God's child, in a majorly real sense. And God, who adores us, and whose power infinitely and eternally trumps the enemy's power, stands up for His children who choose to stand by His side.