Stories, Essays, and Poetry from Latter-day Saints
My essay, “Instruments to Glimpse into the Heart of the Messiah,” was just published in, “Instruments in Gods’s Hands,” the 2026 LDSPMA Anthology. LDSPMA (Latter-day Saints in Publishing, Media & the Arts) are members and friends of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has the vision to flood the earth with light, and the mission to provide professional development to people of faith involved in creating uplifting writing, art, music, and media. Available on Amazon.com in paperback and e-book, the anthology has 62 essays including mine. It was a blessing to ponder this topic in light of my experiences on Maui as an engineer, and the recent service mission my wife Joan and I completed on Maui.
Here are the first and last paragraphs of the essay.
“Early one winter morning, I drove from sea-level up Mount Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii, with my colleagues. The temperature gauge fell with elevation, and the cold wind blew. Stars and darkness gave way to light as the sun emerged above the eastern clouds, casting (or transforming) colors across the Martian-like landscape. As an engineer and technical writer, my assignment was to document subsystem interactions within several large telescopes at the summit and write diagnostic procedures. Due to wear and hostile environments, including wind-blown lava shards, these instruments require troubleshooting, periodic refurbishment, and calibration…
“As we sat gazing at the heavens, we saw the hand of God at work in His natural creations. Likewise, as we serve God’s children here on earth, calibrated by the instrument of Christ’s power and personal revelation, we feel His transforming hand at work in us and in His children. Being an instrument in the hands of the Lord indeed blesses others. But my friend was right; when I put myself firmly in the Lord’s hand to be His instrument, my then divinely calibrated hand becomes more like HIs hand, and I become more like Him. And I glimpse deeper into the heart of the Messiah.”
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