“God Needs Brave Sons”

Henry B. Erying tells the story of the trial his father, a brilliant scientist, faced in his final days.

“Let me illustrate for you what I know about the questions that matter and how they are answered by telling you about the last conversations I had with my father.

        He was suffering through the end of a long struggle with bone cancer. He still weighed enough and was in such pain that it was hard work to move him from a chair to his bed. Others far more heroic than I spent the months and the days caring for him. But I took some turns on the midnight to dawn shift.

        The effects of disease had removed the powers of reason he’d used to make a mark that is still visible in science. He seemed to me almost like a child as we talked through the night. Most of his memories were of riding across the range together with his father in Old Mexico. But sometimes even those happy pictures could not crowd from his mind the terrible pain.

        One night when I was not with him and the pain seemed more than he could bear, he somehow got out of bed and on his knees beside it-I know not how. He pled with God to know why he was suffering so. And the next morning he said, with quiet firmness, “I know why now. God needs brave sons.”

 

I want to add to that an experience that I had a few days after my son was born that had a deep meaning to me.  It was in the afternoon and he was only 2 or three days old.  My wife had had a c section and it was very hard on her body.  She ended up staying in the hospital for a number of days to recover.  During her stay the hospital staff came in periodically through the night to check her vitals, administer medicine, and help her with the baby, not to mention all the machines that beep.  It seemed that the only one who slept through the night was me.  One afternoon, both my son and my wife were asleep, a rare occurrence with a newborn baby.  I was holding our son in a chair by my wife’s side.  I dared not turn on the T.V. or even move for the matter.  All I could do was sit and think.  From our hospital room I could barely see the Orlando temple off in the distance.  I had recently heard that account from Elder Erying and it was in that still small moment that I began to ponder the words of Elder Erying’s father.  He said, “God needs brave sons.”  I thought to myself, “how could an all powerful God need anything of me?”  At first I though of all the things he didn’t need from me.  I was pour ward mission leader at the time and I knew that he didn’t need me to accomplish that work.  And he certainly didn’t need the money I paid in tithing or any of the sacrifices I had made throughout my lifetime.  In the grand scheme of it all those things all seemed insignificant.  I realized that if he didn’t need those things the only other logical reason for them is that I needed them.  Maybe some of those things could help me to be a brave son but even then why does he need me to be brave?  In that moment I looked down at my son, a new born baby completely dependent on my wife and me for his daily sustenance, and thought to myself, ” What do I need of him?”  I thought of all the things he would likely face throughout his lifetime and here are some of the answers that came to me that day.  I need him not to be perfect, I am sure he will make mistakes, but I need him to get up from his mistakes and keep at it.  I need him to love me and his mother.  And at the end of the day I need him to return home.  Surely, with all this world has that can trip him up on his path, I WILL need a brave son.  At that moment something occurred to me in a way that it never had in that way.  My entire life I have sung the words to the song, “I am a Child of God” but it never hit me like it did that day.  I am his son and so are you.  He is the master of oceans and earth and sky and my father.  He is in charge of all of this and all these things were created for our good.  He loves us so much that he sent his most noble son to save the rest of us.  I know that with the deepest part of my soul.  You are in our prayers and he is mindful of your battle.  Be brave young man.