The Lion King is a classic animated film
about the African savanna.
When the lion king dies while saving his son,
the young lion prince is forced into exile
while a despot ruler destroys the balance of the savanna.
The lion prince reclaims the kingdom
through the help of a mentor.
His eyes are opened to the necessity of balance
in the great circle of life on the savanna.
Claiming his rightful place as king,
the young lion was counseled to "look beyond what you see."
Learning to become inheritors of all our Father
has, the gospel mentors us to look beyond what we see.
To look beyond what we see, we must look at others
through the eyes of our Savior.
The gospel net is filled with people in all their variety.
We can't fully understand the choices
and psychological backgrounds of people
in our world, Church congregations,
and even in our families because we rarely
have the whole picture of who they are.
We must look past the easy assumptions and stereotypes
and widen the tiny lens of our own experience.
I had my eyes opened to "looking beyond what
I could see" while serving as a mission president.
A young elder arrived with apprehension in his eyes.
As we met in an interview, he said dejectedly,
"I want to go home."
I thought to myself, "Well, we can fix this."
I counseled him to work hard and to pray about it for a week
and then call me.
A week later, almost to the minute, he called.
He still wanted to go home.
I again counseled him to pray, to work hard,
and to call me in a week.
In our next interview, things had not changed.
He insisted on going home.
I just wasn't going to let that happen.
I began teaching him about the sacred nature of his call.
I encouraged him to forget himself and go to work.
But no matter what formula I offered,
his mind did not change.
It finally occurred to me that I might not
have the whole picture.
It was then that I felt a prompting to ask him
the question, "Elder, what is hard for you?"
What he said pierced my heart, "President, I can't read."
The wise counsel which I thought was
so important for him to hear was not at all
relevant to his needs.
What he needed most was for me to look
beyond my hasty assessment and allow the Spirit to help
me understand what was really on this elder's mind.
He needed me to see him correctly and offer a reason
to hope.
Instead, I acted like a giant demolition wrecking ball.
This valiant elder did learn to read
and became a very pure disciple of Jesus Christ.
He opened my eyes to the Lord's words:
"For man looketh on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looketh on the heart."
What a blessing it is when the Spirit of the Lord
widens our view.
Remember the prophet Elisha, who woke up
to find the Syrian army surrounding his city
with their horses and chariots?
His manservant was frightened and asked
Elisha what they were going to do against such odds.
Elisha told him not to worry with the memorable words:
"Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they
that be with them."
The manservant had no idea what the prophet was talking about.
He could not look beyond what he could see.
However, Elisha saw battalions of angels
prepared to do battle for the prophet's people.
So Elisha prayed to the Lord to open the eyes of the young man,
"and he saw: and, behold, the mountain
was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."
We often separate ourselves from others
by the differences in what we see.
We feel comfortable around those who think, talk,
dress, and act like we do and uncomfortable with those
who come from different circumstances or backgrounds.
In reality, don't we all come from different countries
and speak different languages?
Don't we all see the world through
the enormous limitations of our own life experience?
For some see and speak with spiritual eyes,
as the prophet Elisha, and some see and communicate
with literal sight, as I experienced
with my illiterate missionary.
We live in a world that feeds on comparisons, labeling,
and criticism.
Instead of seeing through the lens of social media,
we need to look inward for the godly attributes to which we
each lay claim.
These godly qualities and longings cannot be posted
on Pinterest or Instagram.
To accept and love others does not
mean we must embrace their ideas.
Obviously, truth mandates our highest allegiance,
though it should never be a barrier to kindness.
Truly loving others requires the ongoing practice
of accepting the best efforts of people
whose life experiences and limitations
we may never fully know.
Looking beyond what we can see requires conscious focus
on the Savior.
On May 28, 2016, 16-year-old Beau Richey
and his friend Austin were at a family ranch in Colorado.
Beau and Austin climbed into their all-terrain vehicles
with great anticipation for a day of adventure.
They had not gone far when they encountered
precarious conditions, at which point tragedy struck.
The vehicle Beau was driving flipped over suddenly,
pinning Beau under 400 pounds of steel.
When Beau's friend Austin got to him,
he saw Beau struggling for his life.
With every bit of his strength, he
tried to pull the vehicle off his friend.
It wouldn't budge.
He prayed for Beau and then frantically went for help.
Emergency personnel finally arrived, but a few hours later
Beau died.
He was released from this mortal life.
His heartbroken parents arrived.
As they stood in the small hospital
with Beau's dearest friend and family members,
a police officer entered the room
and handed Beau's cell phone to his mother.
As she took the phone, an audible alarm sounded.
She opened the phone and saw Beau's daily alarm.
She read aloud the message her fun-loving, highly adventurous
teenage son had set to read every day.
It said, "Remember to put Jesus Christ at the center
of your life today."
Beau's focus on his Redeemer does not
lessen his loved ones' sorrow in his absence.
However, it gives great hope and meaning to Beau's life and life
choices.
It allows his family and friends to look
beyond only the grief of his early death
to the joyful realities of the next life.
What a tender mercy for Beau's parents
to see through their son's eyes the thing he most prized.
As members of the Church, we have
been gifted personal spiritual alarms
that warn us when we are looking with only mortal eyes
away from salvation.
The sacrament is our weekly reminder
to continually focus on Jesus Christ
that we might always remember Him
and that we might always have His Spirit to be with us.
Yet we sometimes ignore these feelings of reminder and alarm.
When we have Jesus Christ at the center of our lives,
He will cause that our eyes may be
opened to larger possibilities than we alone can comprehend.
I received this really interesting letter
about a protective alarm experienced
by a faithful sister.
She told me that in an effort to help her husband understand
how she felt, she began to keep an electronic list
on her phone of things he did or said that irritated her.
She reasoned that when the time was right,
she would have compiled written proof
to share with him that would make
him want to change his ways.
However, one Sunday while partaking of the sacrament
and focusing on the Atonement of the Savior,
she realized that documenting her negative feelings
about her husband was truly driving the Spirit from her and
was never going to change him.
A spiritual alarm went off in her heart that said,
"Let it go; let it all go.
Delete those notes.
They are not helpful."
She then wrote, and I quote: "It took me a while to hit
'select all' and even longer to hit 'delete.'
But as I did, all of those negative feelings
were lost in space.
My heart filled with love--love for my husband and love
for the Lord."
Like Saul on the road to Damascus, her vision changed.
The scales of distortion fell from her eyes.
Our Savior frequently opened eyes of the physically
and spiritually blind.
Opening our eyes to divine truth,
literally and figuratively, prepares
us to be healed of mortal shortsightedness.
When we pay attention to spiritual "alarms" that
signal a need for course correction or larger
eternal perspective, we are receiving
the sacramental promise to have His Spirit to be with us.
This happened to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery
in the Kirtland Temple when compelling truths were taught
by Jesus Christ, who promised that "the veil"
of mortal limitations would be "taken from [their] minds,
and the eyes of [their] understanding [would be]
opened."
I witness that through the power of Jesus Christ,
we become able to look spiritually
beyond what we see literally.
As we remember Him and have His Spirit with us,
our eyes of understanding will be opened.
Then the great reality of the divinity within every one of us
will be more powerfully impressed upon our hearts.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.