This week’s BYU-Idaho Devotional speaker talked about why it is important for Heavenly Father to give us “glimpses” of things we cannot see.
Joel Judkins is a faculty member in the Department of Communication at BYU-Idaho. His talk is titled “Glimpses.”
In his address, Judkins talked about how during our life on Earth, we often have our eyes spiritually covered or closed, which can cause us to fall away from the path Heavenly Father wants us to take.
By following the Lord’s gospel, we can get “glimpses” of where we are and what is ahead of us. Judkins listed three reasons why these glimpses are important.
First, “we can’t see what we can’t see,” he said. In 1 Nephi 8, Lehi said he saw a “dark and dreary waste” and “mists of darkness” in his dream. Judkins said, “not being able to see well is part of our human experience. We experience reality through dark mists and dark glasses.”
The second reason glimpses are important is because they “act as witnesses after trials or acts of faith,” Judkins said. Darkness gives us opportunities to exercise our faith and then gain “evidence of things not seen.”
Judkins said an essential act of faith is to pray when we lack wisdom or vision. The object of prayer is not to change God’s will, but to make our will align with His, he said.
“I think when I'm most successful bringing my will into alignment with God is when I'm the stillest, when I'm willing to listen and wait and ponder and think about how He's answering me," Judkins said in an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio.
The final reason Judkins said glimpses are important in his devotional is that “seeing each other is vital.” He said BYU-Idaho students have an opportunity every day to stand “on holy ground” by having meaningful conversations with their classmates. He went on to say if we want to get closer to Jesus Christ, we need to get a lot closer with the people He created.