There are miracles all around us that we take for granted. Recognizing the incredible in the everyday can help us believe in the magnificent aspects and promises of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We live in an era that is dominated by secular thought, and sometimes it’s hard not to feel like a fool for believing in the magnificent. Elder Lawrence Corbridge gave a devotional called “Stand Forever” at Brigham Young University in which he shares an interesting perspective: “While it is understandable that we may be challenged by the extraordinary, we shouldn’t be, because ordinary things are actually far more phenomenal.”
Photo by Conner Bowe.
Have you ever stopped to realize just how true this is? How incredibly spectacular are the ordinary things you already believe in? Elder Corbridge elaborates further: “The healing of the withered hand is not nearly as amazing as the existence of the hand in the first place.…More phenomenal than resurrection is birth. The greater wonder is not that life, having once existed, could come again but that it ever exists at all. More amazing than raising the dead is that we live at all. A silent heart that beats again is not nearly as amazing as the heart that beats within your breast right now.…How can you believe in extraordinary things such as angels and gold plates and your divine potential? Easy, just look around and believe.”
Aspects of the gospel can feel like parts of a fairytale, and as you reach adulthood and put your childhood fairytales behind, allowing yourself to believe in such miraculous things can be hard. But look around you: everything you see is miraculously real and you are indeed allowed to believe in the magnificent. You already do.
Read or listen to Elder Lawrence Corbridge’s full devotional here.
Source: BYU Speeches
—Kimber Severance, Mormon Insights
FEATURE IMAGE BY ADAM SMIGIELSKI
Find more insights
Read another article about believing by Lauren Buchanan: “Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust.”
Also read or listen to Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk about belief in God “Lord I Believe.”
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