“O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it, that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given them; that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.” (D&C 20:77). As engrained into our everyday experience as the concept of cause and effect is, it is natural to assume that when it comes to the covenants that we make with our Heavenly Father, the effects of the promised blessings follow only after the cause of our obedience. This isn’t a wrong assumption, but it also is not the whole story. If we were to look at the Sacrament prayer above and separate it into, let’s say, promises and obligations or some kind of performance on our part on one side of an equation, and the promises and blessings of the Lord on the other, then we might say that on one side we promise to be willing to take upon ourselves the name of Christ, always remember Him, and keep his commandments, and then on the other side, Heavenly Father promises that Christ’s spirit will always be with us. But is that what’s really going on? Inasmuch as a line can be drawn anywhere, it really ought to be drawn much earlier. In one sense, simply by partaking of the bread that has been blessed and sanctified, we have held up our end of the covenant. The blessings that come from the Sacrament include the blessing of having Christ’s spirit to be with us, but they also include the blessing of a willingness and desire to take upon us the name of Christ, the blessing to always remember Him, and the blessing to keep His commandments. We may not always be willing to take upon us the name of Christ, but as we earnestly and sincerely partake of the Sacrament, then we can be filled with that willingness. We may struggle to always remember Christ, but the more often that we partake of the Sacrament, the more and more often we will remember Him. We may struggle to keep the commandments, but we can be blessed with the ability to keep the commandments. It is undeniable that blessings flow from obedience to God’s commandments, but it is a mistake to assume that this flow is only one direction. Everything that God does, including the covenants that He makes with us, is one eternal round. When we enter into a covenant with God, we are allowing ourselves to be swept into the current of a positive feedback loop. Obedience brings blessings, but not just any kind of blessings. Some of the most important blessings that we can receive are the blessings to continue on in our obedience so that we may hold fast to our covenants and keep the virtuous cycle of obedience and blessing and obedience and blessing going forever and ever. Once we take our relationships outside of the transactional, quid pro quo, cause and effect paradigm that we so often get trapped in, we begin to truly see that our obedience is a gift to God because we love Him, and the blessings that we receive from God are His gift to us because He loves us, and they are definitely all tied together, but not in the sequential and commercial way that governs so many of our interactions with each other. I hope that as we seek to understand our covenants better, we will be much more open minded about what all fits on one side or the other of the covenant, or if it’s really all part of the same side.
