The Windows of Heaven

"Tithing is an ancient law from God. He made a promise to His children that He would open the windows of heaven, and pour...out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." Face the Future with Faith, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

*******************************************

The United States Dollar (USD) and the Great British Pound (GDP) used to be on friendly terms. Times, as they are however, have strained the relationship, so that Mr. Dollar taps rather weakly at the door of Sir Pound. During our thirteen months in London, I gave up converting the difference in my head with every purchase - it became too depressing. I liked to imagine they were on a level playing field, but the truth knocked us about with every visit to the bank. Living in London is one of the most expensive propositions in the world!

Besides straddling households on two continents (with three trips back and forth "across the pond"), we had two-plus-one in their senior year of college, and another marrying and buying his first house. When I think of the impact of our European travel on the family balance sheet, I have to use self-talk like smelling salts: 'It was worth it.'...'once-in-a-lifetime'...'think of the memories!'. However, the best antidote to sticker shock I've found yet is to "remember, remember"... (Alma 5:5-7 and Pres. Henry B. Eyring)

One of my jobs as a young mom was the household budget. I kept it and I spent it and I sweated over it (my husband sweated for it). Paying the rent, the car, the credit cards, the utilities, etc. was never a piece-of-cake -- it was more like eating mushy peas and liver -- but the hardest check to write each month was the one to the church. Neither of us had grown up in active families, so we weren't accustomed by experience or example to paying our tithing.

I can recall a couple of miraculous episodes -- obviously orchestrated by angels to bolster my faith -- when immediate blessings popped up after a squaring of the shoulders, a squeezing of the eyes, and a thrust of tithing into the hands of bishop.

One of those times left us short $200 for an upcoming trip to Philadelphia for Ashley's therapy program. Another meant we had $100 less for desperately needed groceries and baby supplies. In the first instance, we learned the next day that a group of our friends (who were oblivious to our predicament) had taken up a collection for us covering the deficit exactly. In the second trial, believe it or not, I found $100 wedged into the pages of my Old Testament! But those kind of Red Sea Partings, though absolutely true, are not typical testimonies.

What IS typical happened years later when our little kids were a little older.

In consternation I had wrestled over the bills for hours, finding no way out of the basic fact that we could not cut everyone a piece of the action. Like the proverbial elephant in the room, I was also cognizant of the fact that our tithing went unpaid. The check was written, the envelope stuffed, and the stamp affixed, but it had sat in "outgoing" for weeks.

With calculator-blisters festering on my fingers and wads of paper piling up at my feet, I sat at the kitchen table and bawled for a good fifteen minutes. Then -- with just a drop of resolve left -- like the stricken boxer who can barely manage to crawl back to his corner, I picked up the tithing envelope, opened the front door, walked down the driveway, and stood in front of the mailbox. It might as well have been Abraham standing there, looking at Issac on top of the alter: the incomprehensible thing I was about to do would either kill me and my family, or save us from annihilation. Believe me, it felt just that dramatic.

I left it there and went back inside. The mailman came and went and so did the days and weeks to follow. I can't even remember how we survived the crisis. What I do remember is that we never missed another opportunity to pay our tithing. It got easier and easier over the years, even though our contribution, by virtue of the 10% standard, got bigger and bigger. And that's the whole point, isn't it? The family prosperity-index climbed steadily up and up and up until today our grown children are virtually independent (three graduating from their university studies without any debt) and we can afford a credit-free year overseas and a big-fat Mormon wedding this summer.

Tithing is a spiritual, not a financial principle. Our maturity in the gospel has increased in direct proportion to our obedience. Growth however, has made us deeper, not taller. We still find the windows of heaven too high to see through, but we know now that they are positioned just that way so that blessings can flow from them with all the more force.

*******************************************

"To develop enduring faith, an enduring commitment to be a full-tithe payer is essential. Initially it takes faith to tithe. Then the tithe payer develops more faith to the point that tithing becomes a precious privilege." (Ibid.)

Muse with me: What blessings have you received from paying tithes?

The Holy Men

I woke on Tuesday morning, December 2nd, and felt an almost instant prompting to go to the Church website. I fought it all through my morning gospel study and when I finally made it downstairs to head off for exercise, I could resist no more. I opened the website and there saw the headline that Elder Wirthlin had passed away. The flood of tears that followed surprised me, though I remember feeling just the same magnificent and holy sadness when Elder Maxwell, Elder Faust, and Pres. Hinckley passed away.

I just held my head in my hands and wept and wept and wept. The tears are still fresh on my cheeks.

The Council of the Twelve ARE true Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am so deeply, deeply grateful and beholden to these men who serve as our anchor to the truth (Eph. 4:11-13). The office has always been important, but becomes more and more relevant as the last days intensify with confusion on every hand.

A few years back, while living in Florida, where “Christian” radio is big, I remember hearing a talk show host interview a leading Christian theologian, minister, and author. He was describing a compatriot, of his same stature, who ministered in Europe. This European theologian and philosopher had come to the United States to study “American” Christianity. The most important question he had come to seek out, which no Christian leader had yet been able to answer was this: “Who are your holy men?” That is, who are the persons in your American movement that are truly revered as holy? -- the ones that people look to for infallible leadership because they have attained such a degree of uprightness and humility? This man being interviewed, the one telling the story, had to admit with some embarrassment that he knew of none such in America.

We know the “holy men”.

And as America, indeed, the entire world, reels in a leadership vacuum, we are prospering under their example and teachings and inspiration.

“Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior [we may add, through his Apostles]…strikes it all into insignificance….” (Oliver Cowdery, JSH appendix).