Pip's Devotion

I have recently been listening to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and I was moved by a certain passage yesterday.  Pip, the main character, had loved a woman named Estella for many years since boyhood, and he had been led on to believe that she would eventually become his wife.  But another event made him realize that this was all a farce, and he went to see her one last time.  He expressed his love for her and she expressed her own indifference to him, suggesting that he would have her out of his thoughts in a week.  He made this fervent reply: “Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since,—on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character.”  What a heartfelt expression of the influence that this woman he had loved had had on him!   

Just as Pip felt the influence of this woman he loved in everything he experienced, the Doctrine and Covenants expresses how we indeed should see the Savior in everything around us.  We read, “He that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth; Which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made. As also he is in the moon, and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made; As also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made; And the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand. And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings; Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space— The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:6-13).  He is in all, through all, in the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and the light that fills the whole of space.  The Lord put it this way to Adam, “And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me” (Moses 6:63).  We can find the influence of the Savior in all things around us.   

I have often found the language used in sincere statements of love for another person are often similar to religious expressions of devotion to the Savior and His gospel.  Pip’s pleading pronunciation of an all-encompassing feeling for Estella should perhaps be the kind of devotion that disciples of the Savior feel about Him who really is in all life around us.  Even despite the hardship her indifference brought upon him, Pip was still devoted in all his thoughts to her, and we see that same kind of fervent feeling from prophets in the scriptures.  For example, it seems to be what Jeremiah felt when he was beaten down by the people for preaching Jehovah’s word: “Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay” (Jeremiah 20:9).  He could not stop preaching the gospel that burned in his heart despite the physical hardships and rejection he endured.  Paul had a similar powerful desire to preach the gospel at all costs that came from deep within him.  When it was suggested that he shouldn’t go to Jerusalem to preach because he would face danger there, he implored, “What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13).  His heart was set upon the Lord and nothing else, and he, Jeremiah, and others stand as examples of unwavering devotion to the Lord no matter what the cost—until “last hour of [their] life,” the Savior was indeed “a part of [their] character.”