To A Higher Place

Yesterday the Church announced that Elder Clark G. Gilbert has been called to fill the vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles made because of the passing of President Jeffrey R. Holland. Interestingly, President Holland was the president of BYU, and Elder Gilbert was the president of BYU-Idaho. In fact, of the nine presidents that BYU-Idaho and Ricks college has had since 1971 (Henry B. Eyring, Bruce C. Hafen, Joe J. Christensen, Steven D. Bennion, David A. Bednar, Kim B. Clark, Clark G. Gilbert, Henry J. Eyring, and Alvin F. Meredith III) now three of the nine have become apostles: Henry B. Eyring, David A. Bednar, and Clark G. Gilbert. Looking at the same timespan for BYU, there have been seven presidents (Dallin H. Oaks, Jeffrey R. Holland, Rex E. Lee, Merrill J. Bateman, Cecil O. Samuelson, Kevin J. Worthen, and Shane Reese), and two of those became apostles (Dallin H. Oaks and Jeffrey R. Holland). That makes five out of sixteen that have become apostles, or about 31%. And of the fifteen living apostles today, four were presidents of BYU or BYU-Idaho. I guess the moral of the story is that you better watch out if you get called as the president of one of those two schools! Perhaps another message is the importance that the Lord places on the education of the young adults of the Church.

               I read again today the one talk that Elder Gilbert has given in general conference, and perhaps it is not surprising that as an educator and university president he would apply a principle from math to the gospel. He taught, “Brothers and sisters, in this Church, we believe in the divine potential of all of God’s children and in our ability to become something more in Christ. In the Lord’s timing, it is not where we start but where we are headed that matters most.” He spoke about the basic ideas behind a line in a two-dimensional plane to illustrate this. He said, “It starts with the formula for a line. The intercept, for our purposes, is the beginning of our line. The intercept can have either a high or a low starting point. The slope of the line can then be positively or negatively inclined.” Elder Clark continued, “We all have different intercepts in life—we start in different places with different life endowments. Some are born with high intercepts, full of opportunity. Others face beginning circumstances that are challenging and seem unfair. We then progress along a slope of personal progress. Our future will be determined far less by our starting point and much more by our slope. Jesus Christ sees divine potential no matter where we start. He saw it in the beggar, the sinner, and the infirm. He saw it in the fisherman, the tax collector, and even the zealot. No matter where we start, Christ considers what we do with what we are given. While the world focuses on our intercept, God focuses on our slope. In the Lord’s calculus, He will do everything He can to help us turn our slopes toward heaven.” Indeed, if we take any function representing by a line and take the limit as that function goes to infinity, the only thing that will affect that limit is the slope (as long as the slope is not 0). If the slope is positive, whether it is 0.0001 or 1000, the limit will be infinity. If the slope is negative, no matter what the actual value, then the limit will be negative infinity. In other words, what matters most is the direction that we are headed and not the speed at which we are going or where we started from. Slow and steady will win the race of the gospel as long as we keep moving forward with faith in Jesus Christ, and if we feel we only received one talent instead of five, that will not matter in the end.

               As a special witness of the Savior—as a Seventy then and an Apostle now—Elder Gilbert emphasized that ultimately it is the Savior that lifts us to reach our divine potential. He said, “It is only through the Lord’s grace that we can realize our divine potential…. Each of us can become something more in Christ…. Whether we start in abundant or difficult circumstances, let us keep our sights and our slopes pointed heavenward. As we do, Christ will lift us to a higher place.” We cannot rise to what we need to be by our own efforts; that slope will only continue upward as we continue to rely on the Savior. His message reminds me of these powerful words of Isaiah: “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 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 40:28-31). We will surely faint and be weary in our journey as we try to go it alone, but through the Savior and our effort just to keep a positive slope, we can “mount up” in the strength of the Lord. Surely Elder Gilbert will need that strength from the Savior in his new calling, and in whatever our challenges the Lord can likewise lift each of us up as we move towards Him.