Happy Sabbath! I hope everyone had a wonderful spiritual time at church, or whatever your Sunday activities were. I felt the spirit today and really enjoyed all that I learned. Let's start with a scripture! (Don't worry the throwing up story will come right after)
This week we studied the parables of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. My favorite was from Matthew 25:14-15 "For the Kingdom of Heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey."
I loved what my teacher asked right as we finished reading this: "Now if you were to read this with 21st Century "political correctness", how would you respond?" Well any of us would say that the man was being unfair and did not give the same amount of talents to each of the servants. As wonderful as the fight of freedom is, I believe this scriptures teaches us that we are all free but we are not all the same. That is the way we are because "to every man [was given] according to his several ability". It is very easy to think of 'talents' as gifts or hobbies but this talent was actual weight. What if the first man was given 5 trials and the second 2 trials and the last one was only given 1 trial? Would that change the story? That means the first two servants went out and received more trials and then entered into the kingdom of God. The last servant received one talent because that was his ability and the Lord knew that he could handle it but he went and hid and called his master a "hard man" for giving him one talent. How often do we think the Lord is a "hard man" for giving us "talents" and expecting us to receive more? How often do we think that Lord gave us this talents because He knows that we can handle them and multiply them? With just a little change of perspective, we can take our trials and talents and make them into what the Lord attended. The secret is being grateful for a God would did not make us all the same.
Now the Blessing of Throwing Up really has nothing to do with the scripture above except that sometimes we just need to change our perspective and that God cares and knows every small detail of our lives. Let's just say I got sick this week, we can debate the causes of getting sick but I'll leave it at that. I woke up early Friday morning terribly sick with a strong pain in my stomach (which parallels to the time I got sick from pizza on my mission) which kept me from having the strength to get up and move around. I knew I would have to miss class that day but I also had a test to take that very day, so sometime I would have to get up. Soon before my first class, I asked my roommate, Benson, to give me a priesthood blessing. The blessing was wonderful but as he was speaking, what I thought was the spirit at first, turned into the sweats that you get right before you throw up. He ended with "Amen" and I ran to the bathroom... Without explicit details, it was not very fun. As most know, after throwing up, you feel a lot better! I was able to go to my classes that day, take my test, and feel almost completely better the next day. The Lord knew what I needed to do that day and to me, the blessing, the throwing up, enabled me to do so. Small, strange, and gross miracle but it was a miracle nonetheless. I love the Lord and know that He loves you. He knows every small detail and if you do it His way, He will always provide.
Lots of Love,
Devan Alder
No comments:
Post a Comment