Entries Tagged 'Spiritual Thoughts' ↓

Today in Relief Society we had a lesson on Eternal Marriage.  I love talking about this topic in the church because marriage is something that I think is often misconstrued in the media and the world.  Our marriage relationships are of utmost importance and maintaining them is by far one of the most important things we will do in this life.  I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and not all of them necessarily connected to the lesson we had today.  This post is actually one that I started back in April but I finally decided to get it posted today.  I had some other thoughts that I’d like to put together on other marriage related topics, but I think for now this will suffice.

In last April General Conference I was listening to the Priesthood session and was struck by President Monson‘s talk.  President Monson said that the saddest part of his week was reviewing the cancellations of temple marriages. His remark was that most of those marriages didn’t have to end that way. He had two thoughts that I thought were particularly poignant “Choose your love, love your choice” and “Committment in marriage is absolutely essential”.

For those of you who know the story of how Eric and I got together, you might be surprised to find out that neither of us believe in “the one”. Meaning, neither of us believe that there is that one and only person out there that you are destined to be with and can’t be happy with anyone else. Now, this might be surprising because the short version of our story is this – Eric asked me on a date on Sunday, we decided to start dating on Thursday, we went on that date on Friday (no I don’t have those two out of order), I met some of his family on Sunday, he met my dad on Friday, he asked me to marry him on Sunday, we were married 6 months later and we’ve been happily married now for 4+ years. So, the question that begs to be answered is how do you decide to marry someone after just 9 days of dating them without feeling like you have an unshakable conviction that they are “the one”? Easy, after 9 days we knew each other well enough to know that we loved each other and we were willing to do whatever it took to make it work.

If you watch Disney movies or any chick flicks you will see lots of examples of people having these “fairy tale” romances, where they find this perfect person and when the movie ends you are left to believe that “they all lived happily ever after.”  While that’s a nice thought, I believe there’s no such thing as “happily ever after”.  What comes in the “after” is lots of work.  Good work, enjoyable times, love, laughter and LOTS of good things, but work.  Marriage is not, nor was it ever meant to be, sunshine and rainbows and romance.  What I’ve come to realize is that the most important element in a marriage is not that fluttery feeling when you look into each others eyes, but it’s the commitment that you made to weather any storm together that you made on your wedding day.  Quite frankly, it doesn’t even matter if you don’t even like your spouse in a particular moment, the important thing is that you committed to one another that you would love them and work together with them no matter what.  Love is an expression of caring for another person above yourself and you can do that even if you don’t like the person at the time.  Of course, it is best if you can like your spouse as well, and a lot of that comes down to attitude.  Obviously, there were lots of things you liked about your spouse when you married them, and it’s important to focus on those things that you do like rather than letting temporary annoyances get in the way.

I want to close this post with an awesome quote from Dallin H. Oaks’ talk from April 2007 conference.  He says simply pretty much what I wanted to say:

“In all of this, we should realize that a good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection. President Spencer W. Kimball taught: ‘Two individuals approaching the marriage altar must realize that to attain the happy marriage which they hope for they must know that marriage . . . means sacrifice, sharing, and even a reduction of some personal liberties. It means long, hard economizing. It means children who bring with them financial burdens, service burdens, care and worry burdens; but also it means the deepest and sweetest emotions of all’ (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], 194).”

So I’ve been meaning for a long time to write posts about things that I use in my life to make it easier/cheaper/healthier or in any way better.  I finally have come up with a list of things to write about that’s so long that I could have a weekly post for 3 months before I even had to think again about what I was going to post.  And all of the ideas/products/services on the list are things that I’m so passionate about that if you live with me you know that I live by these things.  So I’ve decided it’s time to get these posts written up and posted.  I’ll try to post one a week until I run out of things to post about.

I’m calling these posts “Smarter not harder” because it’s one of the mottos that I live my life by – work smarter, not harder!  I feel like there are so many awesome resources out there and we tend to make our lives too complicated.  You’ll probably find that I post about lots of technology-type resources – websites, machines etc – but that’s probably about what you’d expect from me :)  I think it’s good to use the resources that are available to us to make all of our mundane daily tasks easier so that we can spend more time focusing on the things that are important.

I heard a story once that was attributed to Brigham Young.  I hate posting things that I don’t have sources for, but I so liked the principle that I’ve decided to post it anyways with the disclaimer that it’s likely false doctrine  :)  The story goes that Brigham Young was talking to one of his daughters one night and she asked how the temple work would ever get completed for all of the spirits who had previously passed on.  There were just SO many people to do the work for and she couldn’t conceive of how the Saints would ever find the time to do the work for ALL of them.  Brigham Young allegedly told her that he foresaw a day when there would be many conveniences that would make people’s lives easier so they would have the time to do the work.

While I don’t always use all of my free time to do temple work, I still feel like by making my tasks in the home easier I open myself up to being able to do service for others, serve in the temple or spend time with my kids.  I almost feel like it’s my responsibility to use these resources so that I’m using my time wisely so that I’m available to do other good things.  It doesn’t benefit anyone for me to do things the hard way and I can benefit many others by doing things in an easier manner :)

Anyways, be on the lookout for future posts on this topic.  I have a few past posts that would go into this category as well if you’d like to whet your appetite:

• Using technology to improve your gospel study
• Paying tithing online

I just finished listening to The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.  If you haven’t read it before and you’re someone who enjoys reading I highly recommend it.  It’s an interesting story about a young man who grew up in Afghanistan when the Soviet Union invaded and took control of the country.  He flees with his father to America and returns later during the Taliban rule.  I don’t want to give too many details because I think the fun of reading a book is experiencing it for yourself (ironically this is discussed in the book as a very American attitude).

Coincidentally I also recently challenged myself to read through the entire Old Testament as it is the one book of scripture that I can’t say I’ve read cover-to-cover.  I’m pretty sure I’ve read almost all of it at one point or another, but I can’t actually say I’ve read every page so I’m working towards that.  I haven’t made it very far and I just read last night most of the story of Abraham (Genesis 15-21).  Reading that story while listening to a book about the unrest in the Middle East and the Muslims there led to some interesting thoughts which I figured I’d write about here.

One of the first things that struck me is that if Sarah hadn’t given Hagar to Abraham to wife, none of the problems in the Middle East for the past thousands of years would have ever taken place.  Which makes me wonder if the world would have been better off if Sarah hadn’t done that.  The whole feud between Muslims and Jews wouldn’t have existed because there wouldn’t have been any Muslims to begin with.  I’m not trying to say that the world would be better off without Muslims, just that the way that Sarah and Hagar dealt with each other afterwards has created an animosity between those two peoples that has endured through many centuries.  Perhaps under different circumstances Hagar would have married another man within Abraham’s camp, raised those children peacefully alongside Issac and everyone would have lived happily ever after.  I know that’s a big what if and it doesn’t even do any good to speculate on that issue, but I had a different insight that I thought *was* worthwhile to think about.  What if Sarah had kept her faith in God that He would keep His promise to Abraham and herself rather than doubting and giving her handmaiden instead?  Perhaps all of the turmoil that has happened ever since that point could have been avoided by exercising greater faith.

I’m not necessarily saying that what Sarah did was wrong, perhaps she was even commanded to by the Lord (which was what I had thought originally, but in reading through last night I didn’t see indication of that, please let me know if I just missed it).  I definitely think that it was a HUGE sacrifice on her part to give another woman to her husband to wife.  I’m probably too jealous of a woman to do that myself.  However, it was just a reminder to me to have even greater faith in what the Lord is capable of and allow him to do great things through us.  I think a great example of the converse is Nephi.  When the Lord asked him to build a boat he didn’t ask where he could find a boatmaker, he asked where to find ore to make tools and then let the Lord make him into the boatmaker.  It made me wonder in what ways I’m limiting the Lord’s power to make me into an even better person by accepting things as they are.

By the way if you’re interested in another book about Abraham and Sarah one of my very favorite books that I’ve read recently is Sarah: Women of Genesis by Orson Scott Card, it was excellent and I recommend it even more so than Kite Runner, but obviously they’re totally different books so it depends on what you enjoy reading :)

The other thought that I had was how much we are all really the same.  If you look at Christians, Muslims and Jews we think of those religions as being SO different.  However, we each branch off at tiny intersections.  Muslims and Jews came from the same spiritual heritage, are both the offspring of Abraham.  They just branch a little bit when Ishmael and Hagar are sent away from Abraham’s camp, but still at the roots and essence of Islam, they believe in basically the same things, and they’re worshiping the same God although by different names and in different ways.  Again Christians and Jews come from the same spiritual heritage all the way up until the birth of Jesus.  Then we differ in that we believe Jesus is the Christ and that He has already come, whereas the Jews are still waiting for the Christ to come.  But again we’re still the same at our roots and worshiping the same God, just in different ways.  I think we can often focus too much on our differences than on our similarities.

Now, that isn’t to say that the differences that we have aren’t important.  I think one of the things I see most frequently are people who say that we’re all good so don’t worry about how we’re different.  I strongly believe that it is very significant that Jesus is the Christ, that He suffered for our sins and was resurrected and that because of Him we can be forgiven of our sins and live again.  Eric was told by many people on his mission that there are “many roads that lead to the top of the mountain”, meaning it doesn’t matter what you believe we’re all going to end up in the same place.  I do believe that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only church on the face of the earth today that has the complete truth.  It’s why we believe in doing missionary work and that it’s so important to spread the truth to others.  What we have *does* matter, and we should be doing all that we can to share it with others.  However, that doesn’t exclude any other religion from having any truth.  Nor does it give Latter-day Saints a monopoly on God, I believe God loves all of His children regardless of race or religion and He will answer the prayers of a Muslim or a Jew or anyone else as readily as a Christian, so long as they’re asking in faith and with righteous desires.  Most importantly I don’t believe that people are simply damned for not accepting the fullness of the gospel in this life.

What I believe is best expressed in C.S. Lewis’ book The Last Battle (I know, lots of different book references today, what can I say, I love reading ;).  In that book  there is a young man who is a Calormene (i.e. not a Narnian or the equivalent of Christian) and he fights vehemently throughout the book for Tash (the Calormenian god) against Aslan and the Narnians.  At the end of the book **SPOILER ALERT** everyone dies and they have “judgement day”.  When they get to judgement day the Calormenian young man steps aside with Aslan for a little bit and they have a conversation where Aslan basically says – you missed it by a little bit and were fighting for the wrong side, but your intentions were correct, you are a noble and just person and if you will accept this path you still get to come and live in Aslan’s kingdom.

That’s the best explanation I can think of for how I believe things are going to be on the other side.  Yes, I think it’s absolutely important that Christ is the Savior of mankind and that the pathway to eternal life and exaltation means that we need to accept His atonement in our lives and do those things that will help us return to and become like Heavenly Father.  But if you were a faithful and good person in this life I fully believe that in the next life you’ll be told – you’re awesome, way to be faithful, here are the steps that you need now to gain eternal life and exaltation.  It’s why we do work for the dead in temples.  It’s not to force our faith upon people who have passed on or to tell those people that they were evil.  Quite the contrary, it’s simply to give them the opportunity to accept those things they might not have known before and have the chance to progress onward.

Which isn’t to say that it isn’t important to accept the gospel in this life if given the chance.  I think one of the most important things to realize about what happens on the other side is that we will still be the same people we are now – just dead.  We won’t suddenly be a completely different person with different desires or abilities.  If you weren’t going to accept the gospel in this life and feel inclined to do those things that the gospel requires, you aren’t likely to do so in the next life. (See Alma 41 for a more eloquent explanation of this)

Anyways, I know a lot of this is fairly off topic from the book itself but they’re things that I’ve thought about in the past and have meant to write down and post, this just provided a good jumping off point :)  As always, you can feel free to add in your two cents below.

Having a toddler who can speak very well teaches you a lot of things about yourself that you might not have noticed otherwise. Sam has recently brought to my attention, through the things he prays about, that my prayers of late have become rather stale. Not intentionally so, but each night my prayers seem to fall into the same routine. I’m saying thank you for the same things and asking for the same blessings.

So I’ve tried to add more variation to my prayers.  However, I’ve run into a problem –  I don’t really have anything else to say.  For those of you who aren’t stay-at-home moms let me explain what I mean.  Every day I do pretty much the same thing – wake up, breakfast, entertain kids, lunch, nap time, more entertaining kids, dinner, try to make some family time, bedtime for the kids, teensy bit of time to myself, bedtime for me.  Exciting things in my life include things like trips to the grocery store, a walk to the park or talking to my mom on the phone.  More frequently than not the entire day passes by without me leaving the walls of our home or interacting with anyone aside from Eric or our kids.  So at the end of the day I don’t have a lot of unique things to be grateful for.  I’m grateful for my boys good behavior, for our comfortable circumstances, for the time we had to spend together as a family etc.  Likewise my concerns or things that I’m praying for help with don’t change a lot.  I want Sam to sleep through the night, I pray for my little brother to have success on his mission, I ask for wisdom in how I parent my children etc.

Now, I’m not saying this as a pity party that my life is pretty boring.  In fact, while I could use more adult interaction, I really do enjoy my life.  Each day may be a lot of the same things over and over, I enjoy what I’m doing and I can’t think of anything that is more important or fulfilling than my current endeavors as a wife and mother.  However, how do I keep from saying the same things in my prayers each day, when each day consists of the same things.  I could stop thanking the Lord for the blessings that I tend to thank him for regularly, or stop praying for the desires which I have, but that seems strange at best.

So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve come to the conclusion (feel free to put on your false doctrine glasses now, this is the gospel according to Brittny) that my repetitions aren’t a bad thing.  While I think we should always be mindful of new blessings in our life and putting our faith to good use in new ways, I don’t think that negates the need to be grateful for and pray for the routine things in our life.  Even though I make dinner for Eric every single day it doesn’t mean I don’t like it when he thanks me for making a meal.  Sure you could say that he’s already made manifest that he’s grateful for my efforts by thanking me once, and even if he didn’t thank me after a particular meal I wouldn’t necessarily think he was suddenly not grateful for dinner.  However, it’s always nice to hear it anyways.

I think that’s part of how prayers work.  Even though I’ve already said once that I’m grateful for my sweet little boys that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t express gratitude for them again the next day.  I’m still grateful for them!  In fact, each day I’m more and more grateful for them, even if I don’t  have different words to express that gratitude with.  And I think Heavenly Father still wants to hear about that gratitude from me.

More to the point (ok, really really have your false doctrine glasses on now :P) I believe that in large part prayer is more for our sake than for Heavenly Father’s.  I don’t think we’re telling Heavenly Father anything He doesn’t already know when we thank him for the blessings we’ve been given or ask for other blessings.  He can easily enough see how we act and know whether we’re grateful or not, and He can definitely see the things we stand in need of.  I think that a large part of expressing gratitude in our prayers is to help us see the blessings we’ve been given.  I think it is to better help us realize what we’ve been given to help us have a more positive outlook on life and find ways that we can spread the joy and blessings we’ve been given with others.

Furthermore, I think it’s good to continually pray for the same things.  I think it shows that they truly are important to you and it keeps the things on your own mind.  Plus we’re taught that prayer is a form of work and in many cases it’s the best way that we can help others.  Case in point, each night I pray for my little brother who is out on his mission.  I prayed for him at the beginning of his mission and the things I’m praying for don’t necessarily change all that much, so why bother?  For one thing, it helps me to keep him in my thoughts and finding what I can do to help him.  Even if it just helps remind me that I ought to write him a letter, that’s a positive outcome from praying for him daily.  I also think that it helps him to know that I remember him each night and realize the importance of what he’s doing.  And of course, I think by praying for him each night I’m asking for a renewed portion of the powers of heaven to help him with what he’s doing.

Recently I read a book by Orson Scott Card called Enchantment. It’s an excellent book that gave me a lot to think about.  The book is a fantasy novel and as such it has different people who possess magical/spiritual powers.  In the book the people of a particular village avoid the name of a particular evil witch because as they use her name more frequently they give her more power.  In another part of the book there is a deity whose power is greatly diminished because the people in his time have forgotten his name.  I think there’s some interesting truth to that principle.  As we call upon the power of God, His power is in some way strengthened.  Not that He had less power before but that we are combining our faith and energies with His power and together those powers are more potent than either one alone.  I think as we pray for the same things over and over we are giving over more of our faith/trust/energy/power or whatever you want to call it over to the Lord and He can make better use of our power than we can ourselves.

Another reason I think I have difficulties coming up with original material for my prayers is that I try to communicate with God as I come up against different problems or situations.  I’m not always good at stopping, kneeling down and saying a formal prayer, however I frequently will pray in more of a conversation with the Lord.  For example, we have dealt a lot with getting Sam to sleep through the night.  So when I’m trying to come up with what our next steps should be I’ll often just start thinking through the problem and ask the Lord to help me come up with a solution.  Then I’ll try to go through in my mind the process of “studying it out” and consider what things we’ve tried, what I think the problems might be etc.  I try to listen for feedback, if you will, on the ideas and thoughts that I’m having.  Most of the time the answers that I get will just come as ideas that hadn’t been presented to me before or a good/bad feeling as I consider different courses of action.  So while my nightly prayers may not seem original there’s still communication that’s more personalized throughout the day.

Anyways, maybe this is all just rationalization, but as I’ve considered the stale nature of my prayers lately I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not as bad as it seems.  I don’t think I ought to artificially change my prayers to have different things that I’m being grateful for or praying for because those are the things that are dearest to my heart.  I think by praying for them continually it is just a way of expressing their importance to me.  I still ought to look for other blessings in my life and places that my faith ought to be applied, however that should be in addition to rather than in lieu of my repetitions.  So long as I am sincere in the things I’m praying for they defy the definition of being “vain” so I’m still in good shape.

I would love to get other people’s feedback on these ideas.  Like I said, I’m not preaching this as doctrine, just the thoughts I’ve had as I’ve faced a situation in my own life.  Does anyone else have good ideas on how to keep your prayers from becoming rote?  Do you totally disagree and think that repetition is always vain?  I welcome any constructive feedback, positive or otherwise… so long as it’s constructive :)

I thought this had been posted already but apparently not.  Well, better late than never!

This last week Eric and I got to speak in our ward.  Mostly I was excited to have a chance to really introduce our family to the ward since we’re still fairly new.  Unfortunately last week was a pretty busy one for Eric with work and we didn’t really get a chance to work on our talks until Saturday night (Eric’s birthday).  But in the end I think they turned out pretty well.  I figured I’d post my talk here and share some of my insights with other people.  It’s a little rough because of my procrastination but I thought the topic was interesting.  It was a little weird that the topic I was given was just a talk from General Conference.  It both made it really easy to put together, but really difficult to really make the topic my own.  I could have easily just read his talk and had my time limit but it was hard to both stick to what he said and then sorta fill in the gaps or change things around to be what I would want to say.  Not a bad way to go, just an interesting process.  Anyways, here’s the talk I gave (minus the introduction to us, I figure if you want that you can read about how we met here and the rest of what’s going on with us here):

Our bishop asked me to base my talk off of the remarks of Elder Derek A. Cuthbert from General Conference of April 1990.  His talk was entitled “The Spirituality of Service”, so I will be talking to you today about how serving others can improve our spirituality.  Elder Cuthbert said whenever someone asked him how they could improve their spirituality his answer was to serve more.  Which I thought was an interesting response.  Normally when I think of improving my spirituality I tend to think about things like studying the scriptures, praying, attending the temple and participating in “spiritual” activities.  Service towards others isn’t usually my go-to answer.  Elder Cuthbert broke his talk into 10 aspects of our spirituality that are improved by serving others.  So, I would like to talk briefly about each of those 10 aspects and how we can improve our spirituality through service -

1) Service helps us establish true values and priorities. If I were to ask most of you here what the most important things are in your lives you would most likely not really talk about things at all, but more likely you’d talk about people.  As we serve others we realize how much more important they are to us than our worldly possessions.  You realize that it’s worth sacrificing a little bit more money for your fast offering so that your neighbor can get through a difficult time.   You would rather spend your time helping your child with their math homework than getting a little bit of overtime at the office.  Your time is spent focusing on those people who are the most important rather than accumulating worldly possessions.  As we are taught in Matthew 6:19-21 – “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
What greater treasure could we hope to obtain than the relationships we build here on earth with our family and friends?

2) Service helps us establish a righteous tradition. I think this was one of my favorite points, essentially Elder Cuthbert was saying that as we serve others we set an example that our children will follow in their lives.  I have a good friend who had strayed from the path for a while and had decided against serving a mission.  One night he had a dream where he was much older and talking to his 19 year old son about serving a mission.  In this dream his son asked him why he hadn’t served a mission himself and he had to tell his son that he had been more interested in participating in sinful activities than in serving the Lord.  This was a huge realization for this young man as he had every intention of one day having a family and raising them in the gospel, but he realized that it would be very difficult for him to impress upon his children the importance of things that he hadn’t done himself.

I’ve noticed in the many wards I’ve lived in over the past few years that there seem to be those families in any given ward that are always there to help, regardless of their church callings or personal circumstances.  I’m sure you know the families that I’m talking about, they’re the ones whose names are on every sign up sheet, whether it’s to help clean the church or bring a casserole to a family or go caroling at Christmas.  They’re usually there at the end of an activity helping clean up, even though it’s not their calling and there’s plenty for them to be doing at home.  What’s most interesting to me is if you ask those people about their service experiences they’ll tell you about their parents that were making casseroles and kicking them out of bed on a Saturday to clean the church and sending them out to sing Christmas carols even when they weren’t in the mood.  Service truly seems to be a tradition that we start within our own homes that our children will see and pass along to their children.  What a truly great legacy that would be to have children who serve others because of our examples!  If we want to teach our children to serve others I believe the only way we will be successful is if we are ourselves are actively out serving.

3)  Service helps us overcome selfishness and sin. This point reminded me of a story told in General Conference about President Hinckley’s mission.  President Hinckley had reached a difficult point in his mission.  He was discouraged because the work was hard and the people he was trying to teach weren’t receptive.  After sending a letter to his father recounting his difficulties his father wisely sent him back this response, “Dear Gordon, I have your letter… I have only one suggestion: forget yourself and go to work.” While that may seem like a harsh response from a father to a struggling son President Hinckley took his father’s advice and immediately re-pledged himself to serve the people on his mission 100%.  He reported what happened next as follows, “The whole world changed. The fog lifted. The sun began to shine in my life. I had a new interest. I saw the beauty of this land. I saw the greatness of the people. … Everything that has happened to me since that’s been good I can trace to that decision made in that little house.”  He followed with a recommendation for all of us, “You want to be happy? Forget yourself and get lost in this great cause, and bend your efforts to helping people.”  When we are focused only on ourselves and our own worries and problems it doesn’t make us happy.

The happiest people are not selfish but selfless.  Elder Cuthbert pointed out that all sin stems from selfishness.  Whether the sin is lying, cheating, stealing, immorality, covetousness, or idleness it all stems from putting your own desires ahead of the Lord’s.  Conversely, service is defined by considering someone else before yourself.  Service is one of the best ways to love another person, and I think it should be one of the underlying principles of any successful marriage or family.  I’m certainly not perfect at this, but I try to consider Eric’s needs before my own, and when I do that I am actually happier than I am by thinking about what I want.  Rather than spending my time lamenting that Sam kept me up all night, or that I have a big project for work, or whatever might seem like my most pressing problem, if I focus on trying to help Eric with his concerns then my worries seem less significant because I’m not giving them the time of day.  Plus, Eric is happier because his burdens are lighter, which makes me happy just to see him happy.  And even more so, Eric then has more time and energy to help me conquer my troubles.  If you apply this principle to your marriage your marriage will be happier and the troubles that you might think you are having will not seem as bad as they once were.

4) Service helps to recompense for sin. I hadn’t really thought of service in these terms before, that when we serve others it is a way of making up for the sins that we have committed.  It makes sense though, if sin stems from our own selfishness, the best way to make up for those sins is through selflessness or service.

5)  Service helps us generate love and appreciation. To me one of the best examples of service generating appreciation is parenthood.  How many of us never recognized the full amount of effort that our parents dedicated to us until after becoming parents ourselves?  As you serve others I think it gives you a chance to reflect on the service that has been given to you.  Efforts that you might not have even noticed before suddenly seem more significant and you are more grateful for the blessings you’ve been given.

The other part of this is that serving others helps us to love them.  Most of the people in this ward are fairly new, I think even the “old timers” have been here about 5 years or less.  So if you’re feeling like you don’t know everyone in the ward or that you haven’t yet found your niche, join the club, I’m sure there is not one person here who can name everyone else by name yet.  One of the best ways to get to know people and to really love them is to serve them.  To serve someone you have to figure out what it is that they need and find a way to fill that need.  You absolutely cannot do this without learning something about that person and loving them a little bit more.  Now, you don’t have to go out of your way to do something huge and monumental.  Some of the greatest service that has been rendered to me in this ward has just come from people coming up and saying “hi, I don’t know you” and introducing themselves.  While I can’t say that I remember the names of all of the people who have introduced themselves to me like this, I can tell you that for someone like me who is a little bit shy these simple acts of service have meant the world to me.

6)  Service is the principal way of showing gratitude to the Savior. Jesus Christ has done everything for us so that we can return to live with Heavenly Father someday.  As King Benjamin put it in Mosiah 2:21 -
“I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.”
Then skipping to verse 23:
“And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him.
And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?
And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you.”

So, we owe everything we are and have to the Lord.  But there’s nothing He truly needs for himself that we could offer him.  In last April conference Elder Uchtdorf spoke about a beautiful statue of the Savior, which during the bombings of World War II was damaged in such a way that the hands could not be restored.  After some deliberation the citizens of the town where this statue was located decided to leave the statue without hands and put up a plaque that read “You are my hands.”  We may not be able to render service to the Lord directly, but by serving his children we do for Him what He can’t do Himself.  And as we’re taught in Matthew 25:35-40
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
As we serve those around us we are rendering the only thanks we can give to the Lord and we owe SO much thanks to Him.

7)  Service channels our desires and energies into righteous activity. We live in very busy times.  We can quickly have all of our time gobbled up by soccer practice, work, chores, TV, internet surfing, parties, church activities, schoolwork, music lessons, and the list goes on and on.  While there are many good pursuits out there, we should find a way to spend some of our time focused on helping others.  The time we spend doing things for others will reward us far greater than time spent in recreational pursuits.

8)  Service helps us cleanse ourselves and become purified and sanctified. Elder Cuthbert taught that the atoning blood of Christ purges our sins through our Christlike service.  He quoted a prayer he learned in his youth given by Saint Ignatius Loyola
“To give and not to count the cost;
To fight and not to heed the wounds; …
To labor and not ask for any reward
Save that of knowing that we do Thy will.”

9)  Service helps us do as the Savior did. As you read about the Savior’s life you will find countless accounts of his service to others.  He went about feeding the multitudes, healing the sick, and giving sight to the blind.  You can hardly turn a page of the accounts of his ministry without reading about the service He selflessly gave to others.  He spent his days among the poorest and most afflicted of mankind lifting them up and helping to make their lives better.  If we want to be like Him then we must also be serving others.

10) Service helps us to get to know the Savior. In Mosiah 5:13 we read “For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?”  If we want to come to know the Savior then we must be doing as He did.  As you serve others you understand better the love that our Savior has for them, and in turn you understand better the love he has for you.

In closing, I’d just like to challenge each of you to find an opportunity to serve someone this week.  It doesn’t have to be something big but find a way to do something for someone that will help them. There are lots of ways to serve other people in our daily lives.  I remember during my senior year of college I was talking to my mom once and feeling discouraged that I wasn’t really serving anyone because I was so busy with school and planning a wedding and doing things that were mostly for me.  My mom pointed out that I had my sister over periodically for dinners and was doing a good job helping her through her freshman year of college. It was a small thing, and since my sister is one of my very best friends, not a difficult thing to me, but apparently it had meant enough to her that my mom even recognized that it was an act of service.  I want to encourage you to find people to serve.  They don’t have to be way out of your way, in fact, it’s all the better to serve the people who are *in* your way.  Your neighbors, your sibling, even your spouse!  I promise that if you do this that you will love the person you are serving more and you will feel more loved in return.  It could be as simple as saying hi to someone new, or sending a quick note to a friend who is having a difficult time, or taking over a chore that your spouse would normally do.  I promise that if you will do this that your own burdens will be lightened and your spirituality will be increased.