Walking With Grace

Each of us is a child of God with divine potential. We all have a drive to live up to and embody our God-like nature. We have the capacity and the desire to cultivate and exemplify Christlike attributes. But we are all of us born into a fallen and corrupt world and we each face all manner of temptations to be distracted by or to blow off or to give up hope of ever living up to our divine potential. Following the Plan of Salvation and walking the Covenant Path that we may constantly improve and advance towards our own innate divinity while trying to ignore the ever shifting mists of darkness and the weaknesses of the flesh can feel like trying to walk on water. It is like those classic cartoons where the character runs off the edge of a cliff into thin air or out across the water and they can keep going until they realize that they are no longer on solid ground and then they begin to sink. This is what happened to Peter. Peter had the same Father as Jesus Christ, and thus had the same divine capacity to walk on the water as did his Master. As long as Peter kept fixed in his mind the power which his Father had entrusted in him and kept his faith burning bright, Peter was able to walk on the water. But as soon as Peter remembered that he was a weak and fearful mortal man cursed to live in a fallen world, and more importantly, as soon as Peter placed more faith and credence in the reality of his imperfections and flaws than in the reality of his divine potential, he began to sink. Peter had allowed the imperfect and mundane part of his nature to have more weight and take precedence over the divine and perfect part of his nature. But there was hope for Peter and there is hope for us. Although Peter began to sink, Jesus did not allow Him to drown, nor will He allow us to suffer a similar fate. If struggling to live up to our divine potential in the middle of a fallen world feels as solid and possible and easy as walking on water, we just have to remember that we do not have to do it alone. Leaving aside miraculously walking across the surface of the sea of Galilee, walking on water, whether it be a wet floor or the frozen water of an ice skating rink, is extremely slippery and almost impossible to do so in anything like a graceful or elegant manner. But the Savior can give us His grace so that we may walk without slipping or stumbling, and if occasionally we do fall down, He is right there to pick us back up again. I know that persisting in pursuing our divine potential while so many voices are screaming at us that we will fail and fall and sink can feel like trying desperately to imagine that the surface we are walking on is solid ground instead of water, but we can nonetheless walk with grace as the Savior walks beside us with His arm around us to steady every wobble and keep us on our course straight and true.