Windshield Wipers for the Soul
Several weeks ago I was driving to
work in the morning and a very light misty rain was falling. It was so fine that I didn’t even feel the
need to turn on my windshield wipers for several minutes. But as I got about 3 miles down the road and
began to pass through a small neighboring town, I realized how that fine mist
had now grown into gradually larger droplets which now altered my view, causing
me to turn on my windshield wipers.
This got me thinking. Have you noticed how easily it is to have our
senses dulled and lulled to sleep over time in such a gradual way that it is
essentially imperceptible until something drastic causes us to realize what we
have been missing?
For example, years ago, when my
family and I were walking through a large parking lot towards a movie theater,
either my wife or one of my sons handed me their glasses temporarily so they
could do something with their hands. I
had very good vision and never had any type of glasses or contact lenses in my
life, but as a joke, I put them on to see if my kids thought they made me look
smarter. And a miraculous thing happened…
I could suddenly see! I had always
thought I could see just fine, but once I put on those glasses I could suddenly see,
with incredible clarity, all the details and crispness of things I had never
know I had been missing… for how many years now, without even knowing it?
These memories were jolted into my
mind today by another unsettling incidence which happened while I was running an
errand in town. My wife was out of town
today, so I had decided to go catch a matinee to pass some time. As I pulled up in the large theater parking
lot in, right there in good old Rexburg, I noticed as reached over into the
passenger seat to grab something, that in the car parked right next to me, a
young couple was engaging in an open act of fornication in the reclined passenger
seat of their small car, right there out in the openness of the public parking
lot!
Stunned, I quickly looked away in
shock. In a state of disbelief I sat
there staring straight ahead for a moment, when I witnessed another site. Directly in front of me across the aisle of
cars a minivan pulled up with a CTR bumper sticker and a young husband jumped
out and ran around to open the door for his wife. They both then ensued to help
their two young beautiful children out of the car and holding hands began
walking towards the theater.
The contrast of these two complete opposites
happening simultaneously right in front of me couldn’t have been any more
clear. As I got out of my car I gave a
sharp blast on my horn, resulting in some flailing arms and legs in the car
next door, but I didn’t care to look and simply walked away, pondering upon the
situation, which seemed connected in my mind to my episode in the rain and with
the borrowed glasses mentioned above.
The married couple with the two
children now entering the theater ahead of me were smiling and laughing
and genuinely happy. Their obvious
choices to enter into a relationship through the bonds of marriage had resulted
in a type of lasting love, peace and happiness, which was starkly different than the
lustful, selfish act which had been taking place behind me. What was the difference? How had one couple chosen a path of real
happiness and deep, abiding, meaningful love, while another had been tricked
into thinking that a brief satisfaction of their desires would result in
anything good at all?
To carry out the original analogies,
I guess we could say that such mistakes are made because we fail to turn on our
spiritual wipers as often as we should.
As we try to journey through this life and its mists of darkness, our
spiritual vision begins to gather particles of sin which, like mist on a
windshield, begin to could our view without our even knowing it. If we are not careful, we begin to adjust to
this failing vision, much like I had those years ago, thinking that my vision
was just fine. We literally cannot see
what we are missing and cannot clearly make the appropriate, clear choices as a
result. Each of us is guilty of this to
some degree or another.
"Satan seeketh to turn their hearts away from the truth, that they become blinded and understand not the things which are prepared for them." (D&C 78:10)
After my matinee, as I began returning
to my vehicle, the same car was still parked there beside mine, but now with no
occupants. I shook my head with sadness
over the event, and wondered what the couple was now feeling now somewhere
inside the theater. Were they having any
remorse for what had happened or were they still ignorantly unaware of what
true love really means, and what it takes to actually achieve it?
As I pondered these thoughts while
approaching my car, I also noticed the shiny, clean and polished pickup truck parked
next to my car, which I realized was covered with a fine layer of muddy
film. I either hadn’t really noticed
this before until it came in comparison to the well-detailed truck at its side
or I had chosen to ignore that the muck had been forming for some time, and had
simply become accustomed enough to it, that it didn’t bother me. I left the theater and drove straight to a
nearby car wash as I pondered over all these things.
As my car went approached the wash,
several young men surrounded me and pre-scrubbed with brushes before I
continued on through the washing and scrubbing cycle, and as I thought back
about the misting rain being swept away by my wipers, I considered something
else.
As we go through life, even when and
if we notice the film and muck of life accumulating on us, or that our ability
to see clearly has been gradually impeded, there is nothing we can do about it
from inside of the car. It takes an
outside cleansing force to wipe clean the filth we have accumulated. But we have to be the ones that choose to
turn on the wipers from within or drive the car to the wash.
In this life, we are the drivers of
our own destiny. We are the ones behind
the wheels of life which carry us along.
No matter how shiny and clean we desire to be, travel through life
accumulated dust, dirt, film and misting curtains of obscurity. And there is only one source to which we can
go to become clean. We must activate the
cleansing wipers of the soul called repentance.
And the more often we realize and turn those wipers on, the quicker our
vision will become clearer and allow us to stay on the right path.
Sometimes the filth become so thick
that deep and more rigorous cleansing is needed. The scrub brushes need to come out, and
sometimes, like those young men pre-washing my care, we need the help of others,
such as friends, family members or ecclesiastical leaders to prepare us to
better to approach the Lord from a proper frame of mind to receive the full
benefits of His healing and purifying atonement.
But forgiveness, clarity of vision,
and spiritual cleansing doesn’t happen on its own. We can’t simply say that stopping driving through
the mud will somehow make us clean or think that the droplets of rain on our
windshields will suddenly evaporate. We
have to ACT to turn on the switch and make the appropriate turns of the steering
wheel that will take us to where the cleansing powers are offered.
Repentance is not a passive process,
but an active change in the nature of our hearts and minds. We must ask Him for the ability to see as He
sees. He is with wiper which then clears
away the film to show us a more clear reality to what is around us. The essence of repentance is a change of the
mind. It means a willingness to give up
our own flawed ideas and instead develop the mind of Christ, and through His
eyes see the world clearly, to have a different frame of true reference in His revealing light.
It is this changing of the heart and mind
which then allows us to truly change our behavior in any lasting manner.
And even once our hearts and
behavior change, we still need help to become cleansed from the filth we have
already previously accumulated. And just
like going frequently through the wash or turning the wipers up to a higher
more frequent speed when the rain is falling, the more often we repent, turn
ourselves in the proper direction, and become clean through the power of His
atonement, the more clearly we will navigate the roads ahead.
And the even greater news is that
even for those who may have strayed and crashed their spiritual vehicles off
into the ditches of life, like that couple next to me at the parking lot,
cleanliness is still possible through the Love and Healing Powers of Jesus
Christ! No matter what others may think or the accusing stones of judgment we sometimes even throw at ourselves, there is always a way back and a
way to become clean, forgiven and get a fresh start once again! The devil would have us believe that all is lost and so what's the use in trying, but that simply isn't true and the biggest deception of all in his arsenal. The Lord always desires us to come to Him and ask for His healing assistance.
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