John A. Widtsoe
[Y]ou know there is a great symbolism in irrigation. As a lifelong student of the subject I have always been impressed by the fact that the dry desert soil contains nearly all the elements of fertility. All that it needs is the enlivening power of a stream of water to flow over that soil. Suddenly the land begins to yield, and it becomes powerful. Is it not so in our spiritual lives, I wonder? Men according to our theology are children of God, not created under the old idea, but being literally children of Almighty God, contain all the elements under the law of eternal progression that will lead them into the likeness of their Father in heaven. When this being, this divine being, because in one sense we are all divine, is touched by the power of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, the power that flows from God, suddenly a man blossoms into a new life, new possibilities arise, new powers develop. As I have lived in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a member since my very early boyhood, I have come to understand that perhaps the greatest miracle in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the transformation that comes to a man or a woman who in faith accepts the truth of the gospel, and who then lives it in his or her life. That transformation is marvelous. I have seen it in the mission field, where I first heard the gospel. I have seen it here at home. I see it every day. Every person has a measure of God’s Spirit given to him. We are all in God’s presence through his Holy Spirit. As new and greater truths come, as the understanding of them develops within us if we accept and live them, we are transformed from ordinary men into new powers and possibilities.
The weavers of the midlands in England, the coal miners of Wales, the fishermen in Norway, the trudging farmers of Denmark, very common ordinary people, who accept the gospel from the lips of some humble Mormon missionary become so changed by those enlightening truths of the gospel that they are not the same people any longer. They have been fertilized, so to speak, by the Spirit of God that flows from eternal truth just as in irrigation the barren, dry, soil is fertilized by diverting the stream of water from the irrigation ditch onto the thirsty land. CR1952Apr:33-34
Craig
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