Spiritual Towers

Towers. They're pretty spectacular. The imagination and the work and the architectural ingenuity that went into building the first tower had to be pretty amazing. Towers can stand for hundreds of years! Yet on the outside, all we see is blocks on top of blocks on top of more blocks.


One of my companions and I were playing Janga. We put the tower on top of a stool so its foundation wouldn't be the soft and squishy carpet and we began to build it higher and higher. It was a little better of a foundation but not by much. Unfortunately, in Janga, building a higher tower involves taking away from the already structurally unsound base.
Oh, man, we got that tower high. Every time we so much as blew on the tower it began to waver. But it still stood.
Our lives are much the same. We begin with a little tower. It's not too impressive but we know that we can make it bigger and higher and more grand. We learn and grow. We have experiences that shape us and change us. Sometimes we feel like we have a chunk taken out of us. We weather the storms of life patiently yet sometimes we feel like one more gust of wind will blow us over.

Suddenly, my tower collapsed around my hands. Blocks went all over the room and we had to go searching for them. I was simply making my tower higher! What was this?
I had seen that the foundation of my tower was incomplete, to say the least. But I still hoped that it would last just a little bit longer.

The Lord taught, "Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my
sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock." (Luke 6:48,49)

If our spiritual foundations are "digged deep" and laid on rock (Jesus Christ), no matter the winds and storms that beat us and no matter how continually we feel that the floods are at our doorstep, we cannot be shaken. If, however, our foundations are built on sediment and tend to be "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine," (Ephesians 4:14) we will fall and "great [will be] the fall." (3 Nephi 14:27)
If we are hearing and doing the words that Christ teaches, we are building our foundation on Christ and "when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall." (Helaman 5:12)
God loves us and has given us the way whereby we can be saved and "not fall." That way is Jesus Christ. He is "the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14:6) As we learn of Him and seek to emulate His perfect example, we will be building a "sure foundation" and we cannot fall.