A Simple Phrase that Changed My Life Forever

Fifty-five years ago this morning, I woke up, knelt by the side of my bed in my off-campus apartment at BYU, and prepared to utter the same prayer I had been offering for the previous nine days. 

Ever since I had met David Stone, I had been pleading with my Heavenly Father to tell me if David was indeed the person whom I should marry and be joined to for all eternity. On our first date, arranged over the telephone after a friend of David’s had spoken highly of me, we both sensed that we might have met our future spouse. 

A few days before, the two of us had fasted and prayed to know the Lord's will, and although David felt he had received a positive answer, I hadn't.  Before he left Provo the day before, we had agreed that we would keep in touch and see how our relationship developed.

Maintaining Trust When God’s Ways Seem Inscrutable, Part 2: Reflection vs. Reality

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” I Corinthians 13:12 

In the verse above, from a letter the apostle Paul wrote to the relatively new church members in Corinth, he used an analogy that was particularly meaningful to them when he described how we  understand God and his ways. That analogy becomes clearer for 21st century English speakers if we know that the words translated into English as “glass” and “darkly” have slightly different meanings in the original Greek. “Glass” meant a looking-glass, or mirror, many of which were manufactured in Corinth out of polished brass. Those mirrors often revealed a distorted or discolored image of the thing being reflected. The Greek words translated as “darkly” meant “in a riddle or puzzle, by an enigma.”[1]  Paul’s analogy helped the Corinthians resolve questions that were creating disunity in their congregation. I believe it can help us, in our day, to deal with questions about spiritual matters that some find puzzling, or even disquieting.