love life

Love Life!

Many years ago, Russell M. Nelson gave this advice, which seems especially necessary right now, “Love life! Cherish each moment as a blessing from God. Live it well—even to your loftiest potential.”1 With the craziness and chaos all around us, loving life requires us to be more thoughtful and more intentional about what we allow into our lives. It requires us to be more focused on the good and especially on God.

Can we truly love life without having peace in our life? Can we live life to our loftiest potential without striving to live peaceably? I don’t think so. Is it possible to be peaceable when contention seems to be everywhere? Yes, it is!

One of the greatest examples of this is found in the Book of Mormon. The prophet Mormon described wars and wickedness that are hard to comprehend. Yet he recognized the followers of Christ because of their “peaceable walk with the children of men.”2 Those words have always intrigued me. What exactly does a peaceable walk look like, especially in extremely challenging times? I’ve reflected on that many times but more so lately. The other day I got the best answer!

I was listening to Sheri Dew’s interview with the prophet’s wife, Wendy Nelson. One of the questions Sister Dew asked was, “President Nelson gave a talk called ‘Hear Him.’ What have you learned about hearing Him, how to hear Him, from being married to President Nelson?” This is part of Sister Nelson’s answer, “To hear Him, … we absolutely remove anything that prevents the Spirit from being in our home in full abundance. An example is zero contention. I thought that was an impossible thing. … [L]iterally, if we would be watching a movie, and there would be contention, he needed to turn it off. If there was a sporting game, but it became contentious rather than competitive, he would turn it off. So anything that offends the Spirit —contention. … Our home is designed by both of us to make sure that the Spirit can be there in full abundance so that hearing Him is always on our mind.”3

That is what walking peaceably looks like!

Begin today, as Jeffrey R. Holland challenged us, “to be peacemakers—to love peace, to seek peace, to create peace, to cherish peace.”4

As we do, we will be among those who our prophet today will recognize as followers of Christ because of our peaceable walk with each other. “Love life! Cherish each moment as a blessing from God. Live it well—even to your loftiest potential.”1

References:

1.  Doors of Death – Russell M. Nelson

2.  Moroni 7:4

3.  Wendy Nelson Interview – Church News Podcast

4.  The Ministry of Reconciliation – Jeffrey R. Holland