A number of years ago, I had a most interesting experience with our youngest son Scott. He was a little boy who loved anything having to do with a ball—particularly a basketball. He was playing in the city league for boys his age and having a wonderful time. His team had a fine coach who faithfully practiced with them certain nights of the week at Kennedy Elementary School on the west side of Rexburg. One night I arrived to pick him up after practice and walked in on a “coaching moment.” The coach was requesting that the boys watch a professional basketball game on television over the weekend. He explained to them the value of observing the game being played at its highest level. “I want you to view the possibilities,” he said. “Observing the professionals play at their level will make you a better player at your level because it allows you to glimpse the possibilities.”
What a wonderful thing it is when one has occasion to “glimpse possibilities.” As a graduate, you stand on the threshold of “possibilities” beyond BYU-Idaho. It is not only appropriate for you to be searching the horizon for “glimpses” of what may be out there, but perhaps, more to the point, critical that you do so. We live in a world that affords almost endless glimpses of that which degrades, delimits, and destroys. If one is not careful, one might conclude that such is the stuff of which life is made. But it does not need to be so. There are those, even many, who live life at its high levels of possibility. Some examples might be family or church and community leaders. If you are careful and choose them well, you will have friends or professional associates who will lift your horizons as to the richness life has to offer.
The scriptures and other historical records give more than ample record of lives well lived. We may be inclined to shy away from those accounts, thinking them to be unattainable for the ordinary man or woman. Some even feel discouraged by examples of attainment they themselves are unwilling to pursue. They have not learned with conviction the wisdom expressed by John L. Clarke, who served as president of Ricks College for 27 years, when he declared: “This institution is founded on the firm belief that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.” For the next few minutes, it will be my intent to suggest some characteristics which seem the common attributes of many who achieve the highest possibilities available to them.
The scriptures are instructive in such matters. From 1 Nephi chapters 10 and 11 we read that, after admiring the vision his father Lehi had beheld, “I Nephi, was desirous also that I might see, and hear, and know of these things, by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of God unto all those who diligently seek him.”[1] Already we learn that desire, diligence, and seeking were important elements of Nephi’s quest to experience some of life's better results. We read further in chapter 11:
"After I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in my heart [read that studying] I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord
"And the spirit said unto me: . . . what desirest thou?
"And I said: I desire to behold the things which my father saw.
"And the Spirit said unto me: Believest thou that thy father saw the tree of which he hath spoken?
"And I said: Yea, thou knowest that I believe all the words of my father"[2]
Nephi’s excellence seems, at least in part, to be rooted in his willingness to desire and to believe and to learn. In the second chapter of 1 Nephi it is recorded that he “[had] great desires to know . . . wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me, and did soften my heart that I did believe all the words . . . spoken by my father.”[3] No selective belief system here! Nephi believed all the words of his father. A similar system of desire and belief will also well serve others who have “glimpsed” their possibilities and the possibilities of others.
From historical account we learn of an ordinary woman who, in her way, lived far above ordinariness and taught us much about how to do it. Her name is Sally Bush. Her story was retold years ago on our campus by Jeffrey R. Holland. I quote him—in telling her story—as follows:
"To a woman called Sally, a widow with three children, life had been harsh, and she would indeed welcome a change, an easier way, if it were to come. She thought she saw it in a man, a widower from her past, who returned in a nice suit of clothes with a proposal of marriage and with talk of a prosperous farm, including some reference to servants. She saw the prospects for a better life growing, and she understood him to be a man of substance. She accepted and crossed the river with him to view her new possessions. They were a farm grown up to wild blackberry vines and sumac and a floorless, windowless hut. The only servants were two poorly clad, very thin, barefoot children. The father had borrowed the suit and the boots to go courting. Her first thought was the obvious one: “I cannot stay; I must go back; I have to go home.” But then she looked at the children, especially the younger one—a boy—and while her spirit subdued the passions of her flesh, she rolled up her sleeves and with her eyes on this young man, spoke the immortal words which ought to be engraved on every teacher’s heart: “I’ll stay for the sake of this boy.”
“Oh, Sally Bush, what a treasure trembled in the balance that day,” wrote one whose mother was a neighbor of the boy. And Sally Bush Lincoln did not know when she looked at that melancholy face of the ten-year-old that her stepson would someday be the President of these United States, saving it through a tragic and Civil War, a war which would ultimately claim his own life among the numbered dead. Sally Bush Lincoln, discouraged, tired, poor, looked into the face of a ten-year-old and said, “I’ll stay for the sake of this boy.”[4]
“For the sake of this boy.” Indeed, Sally Bush had employed one of the great characteristics of extraordinariness. She had acted upon a cause greater than her own self-interest and she had the strength of character to “subdue the passions of her flesh” in order to do so.
If you do not currently possess a cause or a reason greater than your own self-interest, rush to find one. Without such a cause (or many of them) life will tend to be shallow and largely unfulfilling. In any case, it is for each of us, first to find and then to embrace the greatest cause of all: even the cause of Jesus Christ, the Master of all good possibilities.
Much loved graduates, if you would travel life's high road, as you leave this place and these people, you must travel with desire and with diligence. You must ponder great lives, great events, great teachings; and you must be believing. You will be well served to have a cause greater than self and the strength of spirit to subdue the passions of your flesh. To do so will add richness and dimension to your possibilities and help make of your life the gift that it is possible for you to create—a gift that you will ultimately be pleased to present to the Lord.
And so we end as we began, with a coaching moment. “I want you boys [you young men and young women] to watch a professional basketball game on television over the weekend. It will help you understand your possibilities. Observing professionals play at their level will make you a better player at your level because it allows you to glimpse the possibilities.”
May it be so for each of us, is my prayer.
In conclusion, I must make reference to Elder and Sister David A. Bednar who only days ago were serving as president and first lady of Brigham Young University-Idaho. They had done so with distinction, creativity, and faithfulness for 7½ years. Until just shortly before their departure, they had expected to be here with you today. I have attended many graduation ceremonies and other functions with the Bednars and have heard them express their love for each of you. If they were here today, I believe they would express those feelings much as they did last April:
"Sister Bednar and I love you. We have so much enjoyed visiting with you on campus and in your apartments, participating with you in home evenings, talking about your challenges and opportunities, answering your questions, and becoming better acquainted. We will miss you. And we would love to hear from you; please be sure to let us know about the things that are happening in your lives."
So do Sister Wilkes and I love you and wish you well as you move forward with your life’s journey. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] 1 Nephi 10:17, emphasis added
[2] 1 Nephi 11:1-5, emphasis added
[3] 1 Nephi 2:16, emphasis added
[4] Jeffrey R. Holland, Ricks College Pre-School Faculty Conference, August 22, 1978, emphasis added