A God of Good Things To Come

Last week one of my best lifelong friends was married.  The event brought back a flood of memories and a few tears. As Ty and I have similar surnames we frequently sat next to each other in school and either shared a locker or had adjacent lockers. In college we roomed together.  After college we worked at the same place across the street from the Riverside Country Club in Provo. Many of our friends got married during this time. When Ty moved to Cincinnati, I stopped by to see him a couple times when business took me to adjacent states. Once we even had the same flight from Cincinnati to Salt Lake. He was returning home to see his family, and I was returning home from a business trip. We were quite surprised to see each other, and considered it a tender mercy of God that we could spend a few hours catching up.  Later, Ty moved back to Utah and eventually we were roommates again. Ty moved out when I got married. We were 30.

A decade and a half after my wife and I were married a miracle happened – Ty met someone, they fell in love, with each other, at the same time, and married. It was a bit ironic to me that their reception was held at the Riverside Country Club in Provo, across the street from where we had worked 20 years earlier.

I wonder if it would have made a difference to Ty if on one of those work days 20 years ago, God would have put one arm around Ty’s shoulder and with the other pointed across the street to the country club and said, “Ty, it is going to take another 20 years, but you are going to find a wonderful woman to marry, and you will have your reception right there across the street. Keep the faith. It will happen.” What kind of a difference would that have made to him, to have that promise to hold on to. Whenever life would knock him down, he would have that promise in his back pocket.

To me that promise is the definition of hope.  Acting on the promise if the definition of faith.

Dating – or finding someone to date – is not our challenge anymore, but there are plenty of others. Additionally, friends around me have heavy burdens and challenges of their own. How awesome would it be for the Lord to put his arm around each of us and say, “It’s ok.  In just a little while this situation will be resolved. Hang on. Keep the faith.”

Elder Holland related an experience where we wanted to call back through the ages to a time 30 years earlier when he had been discouraged. “Don’t give up, boy. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”   (Conference October 1999)

Elder Holland concluded that talk with this counsel. “Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come.”

It turns out that Ty did have a promise in his back pocket. At the reception he told me that for the last year he has had this scripture impressed on his mind:

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

Ty trusted in that promise and moved forward with faith. May I always trust in the God of good things to come, and similarly move forward with faith.