Where's MY revelation?
Opening up to the spirit, even if it leads you to "nothing significant"
On making time for one child
It’s hardly a novel observation that one of the challenges of having five younger children is making time for them. But there’s a subset that feels even more challenging: finding 1 on 1 time with each of them. They crave that. And as a father, I need that too.
What I learn about my children as they interact with me in the company of their siblings is a fraction of who they are—to this I can testify. For example my second son, age 7, who is easily provoked to possessiveness, competitiveness, and surliness while among his siblings, becomes a deep thinker about relationships and motivations when we have 1 on 1 time.
My wife in her wisdom has pushed the importance of 1x1s for years. Alas our execution doesn’t live up to the aspiration. We occasionally do dates, such as a Saturday morning escape where one of us takes one of the kids to a grocery store deli for breakfast and conversation. But they are not as frequent as we’d hope.
The scripture date idea
Scripture dates are an option we’ve rough-hewn over the last few months out of the desperation of busyness, trying to find other ways to make space for the 1x1s. The scripture date approach is particular to the second son, just given current circumstances and predilection. In practical terms, my wife finds it easy to do a short scripture study with the oldest at home. The girls, who are all younger, read the illustrated and simplified scriptures together.
The second son, however, was easily lost in the shuffle until we evolved the scripture-reading-as-date scheme. In the first place, at home in the morning bustle, he was never enthusiastic about sitting down and reading with my wife, and easily distracted by the inevitable commotion of siblings.
Then in terms of his temperament, the “sit at home and read” approach also didn’t fit him. He needs conversation. He is a questioning one. “Why should things be this way and not another way? Why do we do this when other people do that?” Every verse could spark a 20-minute inquiry which would need to be worked through to his satisfaction or else the reading would serve no purpose beyond checking a box.
Solution? He calls me at work. I tell him to find a quiet place in the house. He takes out his scriptures and I pull out mine, and what proceeds from that point is often magical, an interlude of 1x1 spiritual inquiry that would otherwise never take place.
Who does God talk to, how often, about what?
Yesterday we got to only a single verse: “And again, I give unto you a word in relation to the baptism for your dead.”
My son’s first question, as we discussed the context that it is Joseph Smith who is relaying to others the revelation he’s received: “Why did Joseph Smith get so many messages from God but we hardly get any?”
This one hits home for me. It took me so many years of opening myself to crackpot illogic even to consider that there might be a spiritual plane. Or to consider that, if there was a spiritual plane, that it might have a higher authority. And then if that, why the higher authority would be interested in me.
Over those years I’ve arrived at the conclusion that God’s communications are, like miracles, far from being rare. But my conclusion is a bit of a dry intellectual one. In the experiential world, my articulable impressions from the Spirit—those times in which I have actually received a distinct message, listened, been guided, and followed through in a way that was convincingly direct from God—have been few and far between.
So I hear my son’s question loud and clear: “Where’s my revelation?” Because I’ve asked it too. Not peevishly, but with a genuine sense of inquiry.
The rather interrelated answers I can think of are as follows:
It’s there, but it’s not the life-on-earth-changing revelation you thought you were looking for. This has been my personal experience. I have not started a new church. I have not been crowned with political greatness. I have simply gone from being a self-centered slop-pail of solipsism to a man dedicated to building his clan and joining it with God’s extended family.
In earthly terms, the consequence of my own revelations looks like almost nothing. Yes, I do now have a happy marriage and a large family. But for the materialist that just generates a yawn.
I might tell my son, in another conversation, that the Jews of the time were disappointed, to put it mildly, about the lack of political change that this so-called king, Jesus, brought to contemporary power struggles. In that vein for my own life, the lack of external change due to spiritual revelation feels entirely understandable. Significance of revelation is measured only in the spiritual plane. Any repercussions on earth are exactly what repercussions are: secondary.God gives us the revelation we can handle. Most of us could not handle Joseph Smith’s revelation from God. Or, not presuming to speak for you, my esteemed readers, I know that I personally could not handle it.
The idea of being able to handle revelation and follow through on it is what my son and I spent most of 20 minutes discussing. We talked about the idea of second guessing. By nature and training and habit, I am an incorrigible second guesser. Tell me to do something, and my first impulse will be to wonder why, and think about alternatives—certainly NOT just to do it. Give me a miracle and my first impulse will be to make a molehill out of it.
What would I have done at age 14, had God and Jesus both appeared to me to discuss next steps with earthly churches? As much as I might wish otherwise, I’m pretty sure I would have worked really, really hard to explain it away. “Must have had a fever, right? Look at how I collapsed later… The sunshine coming down through the spring leaves is really piercing, deceptive isn’t it?”
Let alone could I have continued to follow through on that revelation for decades, in the face of every opposition and every incentive to let it go.
No, although God has indeed trusted me with revelation, and will probably trust me with more, I doubt it will lead to changes they sing songs about. My task is to learn to listen.There’s no revelation for everything. As in all things, the reality of the spiritual family is useful to revisit. Understanding God as our literal father, and thinking of myself as a father, is there ever a time where I would think it appropriate to give any of my children explicit instructions about what to do at precisely every step?
The heavenly family framing reveals the preposterousness of expecting God to reveal His will about the minutia of your daily life—yet that’s too often the expectation that we bring to revelation. We expect the answer at every minor twist and turn. What kind of father would even try to do that for his children? On the contrary he wants his children to grow in creativity, to find a path that keeps them joined in love to the clan, and that helps expand the nature of that clan. Organic growth rather than architectured construction.
What have I missed? Where’s your revelation?