Our Challenge: To Walk the Walk

Our church's annual General Conference concluded 30 minutes ago. Over the past two days, we've listened to many hours of instruction and counsel from our leaders. In some of that counsel I recognized specific answers to current concerns, problems, and stresses in my life. But now comes the challenge. Now that it's over, will I simply turn off the broadcast and go right back to doing what I was doing before it all began? Or will I take time to turn off the noises and distractions around me and seriously ponder what I've heard? Will I make specific plans to change my behavior? Or will it be "business as usual" as described in this little poem:

The sermon was ended.

The priest had descended.

Much delighted were they,

But preferred their old way.

The proof of how firmly I believe what was taught is to be found in my actions, not by how much I praise the speakers. Do I walk the walk? Or do I simply talk the talk?

Here is a story of one who walked the walk:

"On the night of December 29, 1876, the Pacific Express, a two-engine, 11-car train, was heading west through Ohio during a heavy snowstorm. Among the passengers and crew on board were Philip Paul Bliss and his wife, Lucy. Philip Bliss was a Christian songwriter and gospel singer. He had married Lucy 17 years earlier after coming to love her for her Christian virtues. At approximately 7:30pm, while crossing a trestle bridge over the Ashtabula River, the bridge collapsed, sending the eleven railcars 75 feet to the river below. As water pressed up from the broken ice, the wooden cars, heated by kerosene stoves, ignited. According to an eyewitness, as reported in the Chicago Tribune the next day, when the train fell, Mr. Bliss freed himself and succeeded in crawling through a window. He turned around to pull his wife free but found she was pinned in the framework of the seats. Rather than escape, he devotedly stayed by her side in an attempt to free her before they were both engulfed and consumed in the flames. Ninety other people were killed or later died in the Ashtabula River railroad disaster, the worst such incident in American history to that point in time." (Brad Neiger, "To Act in Holiness Before the Lord," BYU devotional, April 4, 2006.)

It may interest you to know that, although Philip Bliss was not a Latter-day Saint, three of his songs appear in our current hymnbook. At the end of this afternoon's conference session, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang one of them: "More Holiness Give Me." It is clear that Philip Bliss didn't just talk the talk.

I pray for the strength to walk the walk the Lord expects of us.