I ALMOST FORGOT TO POST MY CURRANT BUSH STORY. This is the greatest story I've ever heard. Please enjoy.
(Kudos to Elder Houston)
The Currant Bush
By Hugh B. Brown
You sometimes
wonder whether the Lord really knows what he ought to do with you. You
sometimes wonder if you know better than he does about what you ought to
do and ought to become. I am wondering if I may tell you a story that I
have told quite often in the Church. It is a story that is older than
you are. It’s a piece out of my own life, and I’ve told it in many
stakes and missions. It has to do with an incident in my life when God
showed me that he knew best.
I was living
up in Canada. I had purchased a farm. It was run-down. I went out one
morning and saw a currant bush. It had grown up over six feet high. It
was going all to wood. There were no blossoms and no currants. I was
raised on a fruit farm in Salt Lake before we went to Canada, and I knew
what ought to happen to that currant bush. So I got some pruning shears
and went after it, and I cut it down, and pruned it, and clipped it
back until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. It was
just coming daylight, and I thought I saw on top of each of these little
stumps what appeared to be a tear, and I thought the currant bush was
crying. I was kind of simpleminded (and I haven’t entirely gotten over
it), and I looked at it, and smiled, and said, “What are you crying
about?” You know, I thought I heard that currant bush talk. And I
thought I heard it say this: “How could you do this to me? I was making
such wonderful growth. I was almost as big as the shade tree and the
fruit tree that are inside the fence, and now you have cut me down.
Every plant in the garden will look down on me, because I didn’t make
what I should have made. How could you do
this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.” That’s what I thought
I heard the currant bush say, and I thought it so much that I answered.
I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the
gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to
be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and
some day, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are
going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me
down, for caring enough about me to hurt me. Thank you, Mr. Gardener.’”
Time passed.
Years passed, and I found myself in England. I was in command of a
cavalry unit in the Canadian Army. I had made rather rapid progress as
far as promotions are concerned, and I held the rank of field officer in
the British Canadian Army. And I was proud of my position. And there
was an opportunity for me to become a general. I had taken all the
examinations. I had the seniority. There was just one man between me and
that which for ten years I had hoped to get, the office of general in
the British Army. I swelled up with pride. And this one man became a
casualty, and I received a telegram from London. It said: “Be in my
office tomorrow morning at 10:00,” signed by General Turner in charge of
all Canadian forces. I called in my valet, my personal servant. I told
him to polish my buttons, to brush my hat and my boots, and to make me
look like a general because that is what I was going to be. He did the
best he could with what he had to work on, and I went up to London. I
walked smartly into the office of the General, and I saluted him
smartly, and he gave me the same kind of a salute a senior officer
usually gives—a sort of “Get out of the way, worm!” He said, “Sit down,
Brown.” Then he said, “I’m sorry I cannot make the appointment. You are
entitled to it. You have passed all the examinations. You have the
seniority. You’ve been a good officer, but I can’t make the appointment.
You are to return to Canada and become a training officer and a
transport officer. Someone else will be made a general.” That for which I
had been hoping and praying for ten years suddenly slipped out of my
fingers.
Then he went
into the other room to answer the telephone, and I took a soldier’s
privilege of looking on his desk. I saw my personal history sheet. Right
across the bottom of it in bold, block-type letters was written, “THIS
MAN IS A MORMON.” We were not very well liked in those days. When I saw
that, I knew why I had not been appointed. I already held the highest
rank of any Mormon in the British Army. He came back and said, “That’s
all, Brown.” I saluted him again, but not quite as smartly. I saluted
out of duty and went out. I got on the train and started back to my
town, 120 miles away, with a broken heart, with bitterness in my soul.
And every click of the wheels on the rails seemed to say, “You are a
failure. You will be called a coward when you get home. You raised all
those Mormon boys to join the army, then you sneak off home.” I knew
what I was going to get, and when I got to my tent, I was so bitter that
I threw my cap and my saddle brown belt on the cot. I clinched my fists
and I shook them at heaven. I said, “How could you do this to me, God? I
have done everything I could do to measure up. There is nothing that I
could have done—that I should have done—that I haven’t done. How could
you do this to me?” I was as bitter as gall.
And then I
heard a voice, and I recognized the tone of this voice. It was my own
voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want
you to do.” The bitterness went out of my soul, and I fell on my knees
by the cot to ask forgiveness
for my ungratefulness and my bitterness. While kneeling there I heard a
song being sung in an adjoining tent. A number of Mormon boys met
regularly every Tuesday night. I usually met with them. We would sit on
the floor and have a Mutual Improvement Association. As I was kneeling
there, praying for forgiveness, I heard their voices singing:
I arose from
my knees a humble man. And now, almost fifty years later, I look up to
him and say, “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving
me enough to hurt me.” I see now that it was wise that I should not
become a general at that time, because if I had I would have been senior
officer of all western Canada, with a lifelong, handsome salary, a
place to live, and a pension when I’m no good any longer, but I would
have raised my six daughters and two sons in army barracks. They would
no doubt have married out of the Church, and I think I would not have
amounted to anything. I haven’t amounted to very much as it is, but I
have done better than I would have done if the Lord had let me go the
way I wanted to go.
I wanted to
tell you that oft-repeated story because there are many of you who are
going to have some very difficult experiences: disappointment,
heartbreak, bereavement, defeat. You are going to be tested and tried to
prove what you are made of. I just want you to know that if you don’t
get what you think you ought to get, remember, “God is the gardener
here. He knows what he wants you to be.” Submit yourselves to his will.
Be worthy of his blessings, and you will get his blessings.
http://lds.org/new-era/1973/01/the-currant-bush?lang=eng
The beach sounds so great right now. I need somewhere to go where I can get away from everything, everyone. Except for Emma. She's the only one that even bothered to hear me out.
