Helpful Analogies: The Bucket Of Water

I love analogies and I tend to learn much better that way.  Much like the parables of the New Testament, they help me understand principles in a more realistic and easy to apply way.  I have started recording them all here both to help me remember and in the hopes that they might touch someone else.  Today's analogy is called;

The Bucket Of Water

     Imagine that you have been given the unenviable task of filling up a large pail of water using just a ladle.  Scoop after scoop you slowly and laboriously fill up your pail of water.  Initially it seems like all the water does is coat the sides of the bucket.  Progress is hard to see in the moment, but you persist.  Over time you start to see the water level inside the pail rising.  This creates hope and motivates you to keep going.  Ladle after ladle the water rises higher and higher.  Then one day, while stooping down to dump your ladle of water into the bucket, you bump the bucket and some of the water sloshes over the top.  Despondency sets in.  It took so long to fill up the bucket.  Now much of your progress is ruined and the temptation is there to just kick the bucket over entirely and watch it cascade across the sand.  Eventually you realize that there is a great deal of water still inside the bucket.  Yes, some splashed out and there is less than before the accident, but the bucket is not empty.  You do not have to start over.

This concept of trying, often times again and again to get a certain desired result, be it filling a pail of water or overcoming addiction or character weaknesses was addressed by President Eyring in a devotional talk given at BYU many years ago.  His talk was titled A Law Of Increasing Returns.  He gives many wonderful thoughts and ideas but a couple quotes in particular jumped out at me.  He directly addresses this process of having to try again and again to get the things we want most in life.  Be it a quality education, a loving and eternal family relationship or overcoming a significant trial.  He explains that these things take time for a reason; 

"The simple fact is that there is a God who wants us to have faith in him. He knows that to strengthen faith we must use it. And so he gives us the chance to use it by letting some of the spiritual rewards we want most be delayed. Instead of first effort yielding returns, with a steady decline, it’s the reverse. First efforts, and even second efforts, seem to yield little. And then the rewards begin, perhaps much later, to grow and grow"

The reality is that I will never know why I was given this trial in my life.  It has seemed at times like both the greatest blessing and the greatest curse of my life.  I don't pretend to understand it, but I trust that the Lord knows what he is doing.  I trust that if I try to do what I can to face forward, and get back up when I slip and knock the bucket over, that the blessings will come.  President Eyring bears similar testimony towards the end of his message; 

"Delayed blessings will build your faith in God to work, and wait, for him. The scriptures aren’t demeaning when they command, “Wait upon the Lord.” That means both service and patience. And that will build your faith.

It may help you to watch both for the chance to smile and the blessings around you on the way. And it may help to picture both the future of the people whom you serve for God and his promise of peace in this life". 

I love how we says that we must work and wait to build faith.  I still have to do my part.  I can't sick back and just trust that eventually my struggles will be magically taken from me.  They won't be, not that way.  I still have to work on putting ladles of water into my pail.  It might not always make sense, and it might seem at times like it is taking forever, but the blessings do come.  That much I know for sure.

~~~ Tim