men's hearts failing them for fear

this last week, a phrase from my patriarchal blessing has been rattling around in my head and i've been thinking about it a lot.

the phrase says, "you will also see wickedness run rampant and hearts that will fail."  the concept of failing hearts is what i've been so focused on this week.

i've tried to deconstruct it and wrap my head around this concept.

the concept of failing hearts stems from a verse in the new testament.  christ tells his disciples of the signs of his second coming.  luke 21:26 reads, "men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken."

there is also a video entitled "men's hearts shall fail them", in which russell nelson describes a harrowing flight he was on, where the plane briefly caught fire.  some passengers were in total panic, while he was perfectly calm and he was ready to "meet his maker."  he then reads luke 21:26 and discusses how many today live in fear "because they forget their identity and their purpose."  when he says "identity", i believe he is referring to our relationship with god - that we are his children. he then lists several life-challenging circumstances which causes fear or anxiety in people's hearts.

thinking a bit more about both luke 21:26 and the nelson video, i asked myself, "why do people's hearts fail them in those difficult circumstances?"  two answers came to my mind, because they put their trust and happiness in something that is out of their control; and, because, for guidance in this life, they relied on their heart rather than reason.

how many people have taken for granted their life's situation - and have thought that they are the author of their privileged circumstances.  in reality, we fail to truly appreciate how many things in life are out of our control.  and when something unwanted happens (i.e. it is out of our control), we feel fear and anxiety - and our hearts fail us.

examples of these types of circumstances out of our control would be:
- loss of a loved one (to death)
- financial ruin
- degrading health
- natural events
- accidents

truly, we cannot control these types of events.  so why do we let our fear and anxiety grip us?  why do we let our hearts fail us?

how do we combat this?  how can we prevent our hearts from failing us?

the answer lies in not allowing our lives to be lead by our hearts.  rather we should should use reason to constantly ask the question whether something is in our control or not.  if it is not in our control, then we need to accept our fate, as it were, and try to learn from what life has dealt us.

if we do this, our hearts will not fail us.  they will keep on beating.  and our minds will be content with what we can do and accomplish.  if anything is out of our control, we will accept and even love our fate and exercise our control to understand what it is we must learn from it.

Responsibility of the Tribe of Judah

In my previous post, I forgot to mention one other thing I heard yesterday at church. One of the older members of our ward bore his testimony. He's been a member many, many years and seems very knowledgeable about the Gospel.

In his testimony, he mentioned that one of his grandchildren (or great-grandchildren) recently received his patriarchal blessing. All of his sons and daughters and grandchildren and great-grandchilden have been from the tribe of Ephrium. Well, this last one is from the tribe of Judah. I assume he is not adopted because this elder brother bearing his testimony did not say anything about adoption. But the comment he made on this fact is interesting. He said that they looked up what the responsibilities of the tribe of Judah are and they found that the main responsibility is leadership in the 2nd coming.

I've been searching all over lds.org today trying to find a definitive answer, but I haven't found anything thus far. The only really helpful article I found is from the March 1971 Ensign by Ellis T. Rasmussen. In this article he mentions (at least that's how I read it) that Judah's task is to be faithful to one God and to be an example to the rest of the World. One quote from the article says,

To some extent Judah’s descendants have remained as witnesses of the power of faith and fidelity to the one God, and of the moral and ethical values and the validity of his laws for man if man will live them.

So I read that to mean that indeed, Judah has always been and will always be a leader.

If I find any other information on the topic, I'll be sure to add it to this post.