Good morning Brothers and Sisters. My name is Krystal Swan, my husband Aaron and I and our family are still fairly new in the ward. We moved in at the beginning of September into Skyler and Lena Christensen's old house. We have six kids: Lincoln 10, Ivan 8, Adelia 7, Ollie 4, Ruby 3, and Cal almost 18 months. I'm sure everyone in Sunday school is as excited as we are for him to graduate into nursery. :)
We have a bedtime routine at our house, that we started when our kids were very little. After we read scriptures and have prayer and read stories, and after we've tucked the kids into bed, we stand by the side of their bed and sing them songs. Usually primary songs or hymns we want them to learn. One of the songs we've done recently is Have I Done Any Good in the World Today. It goes like this:
Have I done any good in the world today?
Have I helped anyone in need?
Have I cheered up the sad?
Or made someone feel glad?
If not I have failed indeed.
Most of the time I love that song. But I have to admit there are nights when I sing it, that the phrase that stands out to me most is 'have I done any good in THE WORLD today? I think to myself, did I even leave my house today?
In the church we often hear the phrase "Go forth to serve" and sometimes my mind tricks me that "doing good IN THE WORLD and GOING FORTH to serve, mean that my acts of service need to be given somewhere other than where I already am and need to be bigger and greater acts than what I'm capable of, or else they don't count.
About a year an a half ago, our ward at the time belonged to the newly dedicated Provo City Center Temple district. Our ward was given an assignment to clean the temple, which I've heard is a really neat opportunity, you go at like 12 o'clock at night, right? And you get to help keep the temple beautiful. We had small kids who couldn't stay home by themselves, and since I was 7-8 months pregnant with baby number six at the time, it was decided that Aaron would be the one to help with the cleaning. And for whatever reason, I felt like such a failure. I felt like once again I was missing out on an opportunity to serve. Isn't Satan good at making us feel worthless? I had to wrestle with these feelings for awhile.
President Monson encouraged us to trust in the Lord as we serve. "Occasionally discouragement may darken our pathway; frustration may be a constant companion. In our ears there may sound the sophistry of Satan as he whispers, 'you cannot save the world; your small efforts are meaningless. You haven't time to be concerned for others.'
"Trusting in the Lord, let us turn our heads from such falsehoods and make certain our feet are firmly planted in the path of service and our hearts and souls dedicated to follow the example of the Lord. In moments when the light of resolution dims and when our hearts grow faint, we can take comfort from His promise: 'Be not weary in well-doing. ...Out of small and simple things proceedeth that which is great.'" (Doctrine and Covenants 64:33)
"By small and simple things great things shall come to pass."
I realized eventually that I have been looking at my situation all wrong. I had been look at it as sort of an individual measurement of sorts. "Oh, Aaron cleaned the temple, Aaron gets a gold sticker on his service chart. I didn't clean the temple, I don't get a sticker." It's sounds so stupid when I say it out loud, right? But don't we sometimes do this? Instead I should have been looking at it as a team effort. It didn't actually matter which one of us was physically doing the cleaning. If I hadn't stayed home, Aaron wouldn't have been able to go. And if he would have stayed home, I would have felt he was doing me a great service by providing a way for me to go. Because we worked together, and both put in an effort....(as well as all the other ward members who put in their efforts)... the temple was cleaned. Sometimes the services we offer up won't look exactly the same as the services our neighbor is offering up, but if in the end the job gets done, then it doesn't really matter who specifically did what. The Lord sees our efforts, and He smiles on them.
Sometimes I think we need to expand what we initially think of as service. When you hear the word 'service', what immediately pops into your head?
I'll tell you what comes to my mind, 3 things: 1. Plates of cookies. 2. Loading and unloading moving trucks. 3. Laying sod.
All of those are wonderful things, I have been the giver and the recipient of all three many many times. But there are so many more ways to serve. I think sometimes it's the intangible acts of service, the things that can't be seen or touched, that we often forget are ways of serving.
Sister Linda K. Burton teaches us that charity is just another word for 'observing and serving'...so I'm going to freely use that definition here, in this thought from President Monson:
"Charity --or observing and serving-- is having patience with someone who has let us down," said President Thomas S. Monson. "It is resisting the impulse to become offended easily. It is accepting weaknesses and shortcomings. It is accepting people as they truly are. It is looking beyond physical appearances to attributes that will not dim through time. It is resisting the impulse to categorize others."
Wow! I can do all of these right in my own home. Shoot! I can do them right inside my own head. Really, I don't have to "GO FORTH" to anywhere to serve. I can start with my own thoughts, and then let my thoughts lead to actions. Because if my thoughts about other people are loving thoughts, then I will see them in a positive light, and will have a desire to lend a hand when needed.
Along those same lines Sister Esplin teaches us:
"All of us can incorporate some service into our daily living. We live in a contentious world. We give service when we don't criticize, when we refuse to gossip, when we don't judge, when we smile, when we say thank you, and when we are patient and kind."
She continutes: "Other kinds of service take time, intentional planning, and extra energy. But they are worth our every effort. Perhaps we could start by asking ourselves these questions:
Who in my circle of influence could I help today?
What time and resources do I have?
In what ways can I use my talents and skills to bless others?
What might we do as a family?"
I love this list of questions! I think it helps bring things back down to scale for me on those occasions when I blow service up in my mind to be something huge and impossible.
And of course, we need to include the guidance of the Spirit. We need to pray for and seek out revelation and our Father in Heaven's will for us. Because guess what? We don't always see the bigger picture, or know how the puzzle pieces fit together; but God does.
Once when Aaron was in grad school, and our two oldest boys were babies, I was reading something about a disaster that had happened in a third world country. I remember having so much compassion for those people, while at the same time feeling completely useless in regards to helping them. We were barely making ends meet as it was. There was no way I could go to that country to help out, and I had nothing monetary to give. It was frustrating! So I prayed to let Heavenly Father know the thoughts of my heart. This is the answer I received:
"What these countries need is that gospel. What you can do is raise your boys to be missionaries -- to go out into the world and teach."
There are so many ways to serve. At that time I hadn't even considered teaching the gospel as a service, I'd been so concerned about physical needs. But again, "By small and simple means, great things shall come to pass." And so we've been trying our best, since then, to raise our boys -- and our girls too, now that we have them-- with a knowledge and testimony of the gospel, so that some day they can go out into the world and share that knowledge.
To end, I want to read a quote from Elder Jeffery R Holland. It's a bit long, so bare with me, but too good not to share in it's entirety. He doesn't actually say the word 'service', but listen to the things he is grateful for:
I have struggled to find an adequate way to tell you how loved of God you are and how grateful we on this stand are for you. I am trying to be voice for the very angels of heaven in thanking you for every good thing you have ever done, for every kind word you have ever said, for every sacrifice you have ever made in extending to someone—to anyone—the beauty and blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I am grateful for Young Women leaders who go to girls camp and, without shampoo, showers, or mascara, turn smoky, campfire testimony meetings into some of the most riveting spiritual experiences those girls—or those leaders—will experience in their lifetime. I am grateful for all the women of the Church who in my life have been as strong as Mount Sinai and as compassionate as the Mount of Beatitudes. We smile sometimes about our sisters’ stories—you know, green Jell-O, quilts, and funeral potatoes. But my family has been the grateful recipient of each of those items at one time or another—and in one case, the quilt and the funeral potatoes on the same day. It was just a small quilt—tiny, really—to make my deceased baby brother’s journey back to his heavenly home as warm and comfortable as our Relief Society sisters wanted him to be. The food provided for our family after the service, voluntarily given without a single word from us, was gratefully received. Smile, if you will, about our traditions, but somehow the too-often unheralded women in this church are always there when hands hang down and knees are feeble.1 They seem to grasp instinctively the divinity in Christ’s declaration: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these …, ye have done it unto me.”
And no less the brethren of the priesthood. I think, for example, of the leaders of our young men who, depending on the climate and continent, either take bone-rattling 50-mile (80 km) hikes or dig—and actually try to sleep in—ice caves for what have to be the longest nights of human experience. I am grateful for memories of my own high priests group, which a few years ago took turns for weeks sleeping on a small recliner in the bedroom of a dying quorum member so that his aged and equally fragile wife could get some sleep through those final weeks of her sweetheart’s life. I am grateful for the Church’s army of teachers, officers, advisers, and clerks, to say nothing of people who are forever setting up tables and taking down chairs. I am grateful for ordained patriarchs, musicians, family historians, and osteoporotic couples who trundle off to the temple at 5:00 in the morning with little suitcases now almost bigger than they are. I am grateful for selfless parents who—perhaps for a lifetime—care for a challenged child, sometimes with more than one challenge and sometimes with more than one child. I am grateful for children who close ranks later in life to give back to ill or aging parents.
And to the near-perfect elderly sister who almost apologetically whispered recently, “I have never been a leader of anything in the Church. I guess I’ve only been a helper,” I say, “Dear sister, God bless you and all the ‘helpers’ in the kingdom.” Some of us who are leaders hope someday to have the standing before God that you have already attained.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment