The Miracle of "Fast" Sunday

Happy Blog day everybody! With the commencement of a new job, new school semester, and lots of personal projects, I have found it difficult to even find a sliver of time to write for my own purposes.

In honor of that light, I have to draw upon a previously written short story for you this week. I hope you will still enjoy and understand that I am trying my best to still meet deadlines for you because I love doing this! So here you go, it was written about four months ago but I am just now publishing it!

"The Miracle of 'Fast' Sunday"

“Consider what happens if your gospel perspective becomes the lens you look through in every aspect of your life. A gospel perspective will give you greater clarity regarding how you think about your life priorities, solve problems, and face personal temptations.” -Gary E. Stevenson

As the late summer air tumbled off the evergreen peeks, his alarm blared so evidently not in his favor. It was Fast Sunday in Bear Lake ID, and it was going to be a good day… just a fairly early one. He swung his feet off the bed and sighed deeply, his comforter was the only thing standing between him and a few more hours of precious sleep. Still, he mustered the strength to sit up and utter a drowsy prayer. Not half-way through his plea for daily strength, an unpleasant realization crept into his thoughts: He had forgotten to pack his dress clothes.

Quickly, he finished his prayer and rose to his feet. Maybe there was some clothes around the cabin? Or maybe one of his friends brought extra? The perilous search began and as the minutes passed, his stress increased—not a great start to a sabbath day.

After much searching, he lucked out. In a furnace room hung some options: black and yellow Hawaiian button up, bright yellow polo, or a 3XL white collar shirt and “parachute” dress pants. The decision wasn’t difficult, it was just unpleasant. Of course, he would blend into the congregation with a white shirt and black slacks but he would stick out for being the size of a tele-tubby. Reluctantly, he put it on and headed to the bathroom; maybe doing his hair nice would balance his emotions. Little did he know, the day was about to become a whole lot more frustrating.

As he approached the bathroom sink, he underestimated the height of the door frame and slammed his forehead into it aggressively. He clutched his fist and tried not to let it get to him, though it was already in his head… literally. He shut the door and Jimmy-rigged the sliding lock but suddenly felt a stinging pain in his finger. He had slipped and cut it clean open without recognizing.

He met his own gaze in the mirror and refused to smile. It had been 6 minutes since he had waken up. His thoughts were quickly interrupted with the rumbling of his stomach; he was purposefully going without food to show his faith toward God, but the hunger often made him sick to his stomach and today apparently wasn’t an exception.

“Why can’t I just have a normal, relaxing day!?” he almost screamed out loud.

A few more minutes passed and he found himself walking to the church building in his baggy clothes. All he had to do was make it to church and everything would be okay right?

Wrong—Primary chairs.

They had to sit in primary chairs in a hot room with 40 other strangers and their four-year olds. The church was too full of visitors on vacation that there was “no room for them in the inn.” So there he sat, goose-egg, bleeding finger, and inflated clothing, in a chair the size of a basketball. If he listened with absolute acute focus, he could muster a few words coming out of an old speaker but it was mostly drowned out by screaming/humming children playing with legos and hitting their siblings.

But in the midst of this Murphy’s-Law-kinda-day, he felt something deep inside him telling him to breathe and to slow down on this “fast” Sunday(for it truly was leaving him in the dust). So he listened. He breathed. Then, with whimsical determination, he pulled out his phone and searched through a selection of religious speeches. Clicking one at random, he soon read these words:

“Consider what happens if your gospel perspective becomes the lens you look through in every aspect of your life. A gospel perspective will give you greater clarity regarding how you think about your life priorities, solve problems, and face personal temptations.” -Gary E. Stevenson

Even SOLVE PROBLEMS! Maybe he just needed to see today through a “different lens,” what else was he going to do? So that’s exactly what he did, he pondered on the series of unfortunate events that led him to this point. It started with the hectic search for clothing and acquiring them in giant sizes. But hey, at least they were available and he didn’t have to sit home from church in fear of embarrassment from only wearing shorts and a T-shirt. And about the doorframe, he wouldn’t have hit it if he were short, but he wasn’t, he was blessed with height and loved being tall. The cut? Was it not a good way to remember the blood of Jesus Christ? The tiny cut was nothing compared to what his Savior went through for him! And the primary chairs were just a humble reminder to not take church for granted. Each event had further meaning when seen with a different perspective, a “gospel perspective!”

So there he sat, in awe(as always) of the God of miracles, even the miracle of making “Fast Sunday” slow down.

“Perspective means to see all the facts in a meaningful relationship, the whole view.” -Dallin H. oaks

-Cale Kenneth Montoya(09/03/23)

This story..... is true. It happened to me the same day that I wrote it (September 3rd) and I truly did learn the principles mentioned.

If you have ever, or will ever take a tour of Jerusalem with my dad, he would tell you about the original temple steps leading up to the southern wall where the original temple of Solomon once stood. These stairs are lopsided, unproportionate, miss-matched, and uneven. If you think about the significance and symbolism of this, you can see that it takes a lot of thought and attention to climb these stairs and thus provoked deep thinking and sure attention as one would enter the temple.

What happened at Bear Lake that day was a lesson to me to slow down and pay attention. It was my "temple steps."

What are your "temple steps?"

Love y'all!

-Cale Montoya (01/12/24)