10/02/2016
This afternoon, I told a kind of parable suggesting how divine love transforms a willing soul. The story was of Helen Keller, a young woman born in 1880 in Alabama who was both deaf and blind.
Helen’s parents hired a teacher for their daughter, a woman named Anne Sullivan. Just as we have in the Savior one who understands our infirmities, Anne had struggled with her own serious handicaps and hardships and understood Helen’s infirmities. At age five, Anne had contracted a disease that caused painful scarring of the cornea and left her mostly blind.
To help Helen learn words, Anne would spell the names of familiar objects with her finger on the palm of Helen’s hand. “[Helen] enjoyed this ‘finger play,’ but she didn’t understand until the famous moment when Anne spelled ‘w-a-t-e-r’ while pumping water over [Helen’s] hand.
“[Helen] later wrote, ‘Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten; … and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! … Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life.’”
Helen’s parents were satisfied with Anne’s work. But Anne knew Helen was capable of much, much more. Even so, we may be quite content with what we have achieved in our lives and that we simply are what we are, while our divine Teacher comprehends a glorious potential that we perceive only “through a glass darkly.”
The ecstasy we experience as we feel that divine potential unfolding within us is analogous to the joy Helen Keller felt when words came to life, giving light to her soul and setting it free. “As it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
What a precious gift is divine love! Will you not love Him who first loved you? Then keep His commandments.
Image courtesy of the Samuel P. Hayes Research Library, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA.
