If my fourteen-year-old son\u2019s vocabulary is any indication, it is in vogue to be \u201cweird\u201d or feel \u201cweird\u201d or act \u201cweird.\u201d I\u2019d like to begin this morning telling you of a truly \u201cweird\u201d experience I had last year.<\/p>\n
Some of you will remember that last November we had a concert on campus featuring Billy Joel. Now President Holland and I aren\u2019t quite up to the Billy Joel kind of performance (we are more into the St. George Senior Citizens Chorus), so we didn\u2019t attend. But the night after the Billy Joel concert, I had a very unusual dream\u2014a \u201cweird\u201d dream, I think it is safe to say.<\/p>\n
I dreamed that Billy and I were driving down the highway talking about his experience at BYU. I was driving the car and completely in control, but suddenly I became terrified of something that was ahead. So, instead of continuing on our journey, I veered off the road and sent the car careening over the edge of a steep cliff. Instead of the crash landing expected, we were somehow plucked out of the car and perched safely on a ledge hidden from view. We sat comfortably, watching huge crowds of people milling down below. They were coming and going and looking around but never discovering the occupants of the battered car.<\/p>\n
When I awoke the next morning, I was incredulous! What on earth\u2014I said to myself\u2014would a forty-five-year-old mother hen to thousands of BYU students have in common with Billy Joel? Now, at this point, I suppose I do have to confess to you that one of my lifelong secret desires has been to play the drums in a rock band, but that didn\u2019t seem to be adequate motivation for a 3-D, Cinerama, Dolby sound, full-length \u201cweird\u201d dream.<\/p>\n
I pondered a long time about that dream\u2014and whether it is the right interpretation or not, I finally decided that I had associated Billy Joel\u2019s concert performance for you with my own frequent assignments to speak to the same kind of crowd in this same<\/i> monstrous hall and with every one of those same<\/i> eyes upon me. I surmised that neither of us needed to put up with such performance fears any longer, so I just detoured us over the cliff. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask Billy if he wanted to accompany me. But that\u2019s the price he had to pay for riding with me. Next time he may want to take Greyhound.<\/p>\n
Nonsense and rock concerts aside, I think I really did identify with the public performance of such a concert and subconsciously preferred to hide in safety, far from the gaze of the crowd. Anonymity has always seemed pretty appealing to me, yet here I am\u2014and there you are\u2014and the show must go on, again!<\/p>\n
I tell that ridiculous, but true, story for a purpose this morning. I have wondered and worried and prayed about what to say to you. And I have felt that perhaps some of you, who may feel a bit shy and more than a little overwhelmed at a place like BYU, need to know that the rest of us are pretty shy, too, and that lots of people\u2014maybe most people\u2014have fears about new experiences with people we don\u2019t know. As long as I\u2019m already on the analyst\u2019s couch with my dream, I will go on to confess that I have always had my fair share of fears, too, and maybe you have as well. Life has lots of challenges, and some of them can be fearful.<\/p>\n
I remember the fear I had coming here as a new student. I was terrified that I wouldn\u2019t be able to pass my exams or even find the classrooms. I was afraid I wouldn\u2019t get along with my new roommate. I worried that my money would not last, and I was certain that I would never get asked for a date. On occasion, I still awaken in the night in a cold sweat, having dreamed I had gone a whole semester without attending a class I\u2019d registered for and that my transcript had incompletes and UWs stamped across the front of it. I have, in the course of my forty-plus years, managed to worry about almost everything.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the bad news. The good news is that almost none of the things I have worried about or been afraid of have ever happened. I suppose that is why Elder Packer said recently, \u201cYou can\u2019t tell me worrying doesn\u2019t help because the things I worry about never happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I have come to realize, as perhaps you need to, that our real problem is not so much fear of things or people or places but rather fear itself. I\u2019ve learned, as many of you have, that such anxiety is one of Satan\u2019s greatest tools, and it needs to be opposed.<\/p>\n
In a motherly sort of way, I plead with each one of you to understand that your opportunity to learn<\/i> can greatly magnify your faith\u2014faith in yourself, faith in your future, faith in a God who is your father and who loves you. Please understand this right now\u2014God is not<\/i> a vengeful, punitive god who is somehow looking for new ways to torment, embarrass, and punish you. For too much of my young life that is the way I saw him, and I often obeyed him out of guilt and anxiety rather than faith and genuine desire. But you\u2014you<\/i> are here at the<\/i> university that teaches of a living God, of which Elder George Q. Morris, a former member of the Council of the Twelve, once said, \u201cIt is called the Brigham Young University, but it is the University of the Kingdom of God\u201d<\/i> (Ernest L. Wilkinson, ed., Brigham Young University: The First One Hundred Years <\/i>[Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975] 4:391; emphasis added). Please understand, you have come to a place designed by God, governed by apostles, and presided over by a prophet to help you discover your divine potential. I promise you that if you will treat it seriously and sacredly, faith will begin to replace fear, and you<\/i> will stand confident before God and man.<\/i><\/p>\n
Brother Dennis Rasmussen of our philosophy department has written:<\/p>\n
To be a child of God is to share his divine nature. But that nature is still potential in man, and the purpose of life (and I might add learning) is to make it <\/i>actual . . . Man has invented many names for himself; most of them are wrong. But man wears them like labels and often comes to believe them. Who has not worn with shame and mute belief the name of Stupid or Awkward or Nobody or even Wicked? But God calls to man with a new name that only God can speak. He addresses his children born in <\/i>his image and asks, \u201cCan you look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances?\u201d (Alma 5:19<\/a>.)<\/i>[Dennis Rasmussen, The Lord\u2019s Question: Thoughts on the Life of Response<\/i> (Provo, Utah: Keter Foundation, 1985), pp. 7\u20138; emphasis added]<\/p>\n We owe it to that divine potential in us to look up to God without<\/i> fear. Some of you wonder whether God even knows you exist, or if he does know, does he care that you exist? He declares in reply that he knows every one of you and loves you dearly and can call each<\/i> of you by name.<\/i> He has promised that the very hairs of your head are all numbered to him. <\/i>\u201cThe very hairs of your head\u201d\u2014that proclaims a lot<\/i> of fatherly interest. He has also declared that not even one sparrow will fall to the ground unnoticed. \u201cFear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than . . . sparrows\u201d (Matthew 10:30\u201331<\/a>).<\/p>\n Did you notice the way the Lord begins that scripture? \u201cFear ye not.\u201d Have you noticed how often the Lord prefaces so many things that he has to say with the words fear not?<\/i> He knows that all people struggle with fears and anxieties and problems. He wants so much for us to know that. If we will but come to him, he will comfort and reassure us. And he will carry us in his arms until we are able to walk by ourselves.<\/p>\n For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.<\/i><\/p>\n