Integrity - Jeffrey R. Holland
May I share with you a
little story that I remember from my childhood which helps make the
case for integrity in little things so that the big things may then
take care of themselves.
A storybook emperor called
all the young people in his kingdom together one day. He said, “It
has come time for me to step down and to choose the next emperor.
It will be one of you. In making that selection, I am going to give
each one of you a seed today. Come back here one year from today
with what you have grown from this one seed.”
A young boy named Ling was
in the crowd of children. He went home and excitedly told his
mother the whole story. She helped him get a pot and some planting
soil. He planted the seed given him. Every day he would water it
and watch to see if it had grown.
After about three weeks,
some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the
plants that were beginning to grow. Ling kept checking his pot, but
nothing ever grew in it.
Eventually all the others
were talking about their plants. Ling was apparently the only
failure. Everyone else spoke of small trees and tall plants, but he
had nothing.
Finally a year went by, and
all the youths brought their plants to the emperor for inspection.
Ling told his mother that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But
she encouraged him to go, report how hard he had tried, and be
honest about what happened. Ling felt sick to his stomach, but he
knew his mother was right. He took his empty pot to the palace.
Ling put his empty pot on
the floor amidst beautiful plants and flowers of all shapes and
sizes. When the emperor arrived, Ling tried to hide in the back of
the room. But the emperor spotted Ling—empty pot and all. He
ordered his guards to bring him to the front, where the leader
said, “Behold your new emperor!”
To a now very
quiet audience, the older man said, “One year ago today I gave
everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water
it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds,
which would not grow. Yet all of you, except one, have brought me
magnificent trees and plants and flowers. Obviously, when you found
that the seed I gave you would not grow, you substituted another.
Apparently only one young man among you had the integrity to abide
by the rules I gave you. I can trust him to take my place and lead
my people.”
“The heritage of our
American nation includes a profound reverence for integrity.
. . . In one speech, characteristic of others he would
make, Abraham Lincoln took a position that would end up costing him
his race for U.S. Senate vs. Stephen A. Douglas. [He said boldly
that] the country could not survive . . . as a house divided,
‘half-slave and half-free.’ He knew [what the] consequences of his
words [on such an emotional issue might be, but he said]: ‘I would
rather be defeated with [that declaration in my] speech
. . . than to be victorious without it.’ [And he was
defeated.]
“[But] the integrity that
cost him the senate seat [later] won him the presidency [of the
nation]. It . . . also inspired the nation to prevail in
[its most brutal war] and [ultimately it freed those slaves about
whom he spoke. In great measure] Lincoln’s integrity shaped our
young nation’s values [at that crucial time and still defines] what
it means to be American.”9
Lance B. Wickman related the following experience:
“In November 1966, I had
been in the combat zone of Vietnam for nearly ten months. I was an
infantry platoon leader. I had experienced much of the perils, the
trials, the moment-to-moment anxiety of combat. Our battalion had
just returned to our base camp for some ‘R and R’
. . . after several weeks in the jungles and rice
paddies. It was a Saturday night. Having taken our first showers in
a very long time, we were sitting around on our bunks cleaning our
rifles and listening to music on the Armed Forces Radio Network.
Suddenly, an urgent message crackled over our battalion radio
network. A sister battalion in our brigade—still in the jungle—was
being overrun by a much larger enemy force. We were needed. We had
to go, right then, to the rescue.
“It is very hard to
adequately describe the icy feelings that clutched at my heart in
that moment. . . .
“How I would have liked
[more] time. [Time to rest. Time] to prepare! Time to ponder
inspiring scripture. Time to pray. . . . Time to ‘gird up [my]
loins’ [scripturally speaking]. But there was no time. I only could
grab my helmet, my rifle, give some terse orders to my men and move
out. But one thing I could do was to utter a silent prayer in my
heart. And as I did, there came to my mind—literally—a ‘still,
small voice.’ The voice repeated the words to a passage of
scripture that I had memorized . . . as a missionary.
Words that have become my very favorite in all scripture: ‘Trust in
the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own
understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will direct
thy paths’ (Proverbs 3:5–6). As those words came to mind, peace
filled my heart. The foreboding retreated.
“. . . We
remained in the jungle on that operation [for many weeks] following
that nocturnal SOS message. Finally, it was the very last day of
[the] operation. I was riding in an armored personnel carrier
through a lightly forested area of jungle. Suddenly, an enormous
explosion beneath the vehicle [literally lifted] it off the ground.
. . . Enemy soldiers nearby had detonated a huge
landmine. The engine was blown out. The tracks and all the road
wheels were blown off. Everyone inside, including me, was wounded.
But no one died.
“And in that
. . . moment, there again came to my mind that same still
voice and that some passage of scripture. ‘Trust in the Lord with
all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all
thy ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy
paths.’”10
In life or in death, I
declare as an expression of my integrity that God lives and loves
us, that He will always be with us and will—if we but trust in
Him—direct our personal paths.
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