I'd like to introduce Beautiful Thing Thursday, wherein each Thursday I will post something that I find uplifting, lovely, or profound. This was prompted by Elder Bednar's Education Week talk "To Sweep the Earth as With a Flood" and, oddly enough, a Sunday School lesson I taught about Jonah a few weeks ago. We skipped right past the Jonah-as-whale-food portion and spent most of the time talking about sharing the Gospel instead. My main point was that we tend to have a very narrow view of what constitutes "missionary work," and if you're like me, you spend a lot of time beating yourself up about how poorly you do traditional missionary work (i.e. giving Books of Mormon to friends and neighbors and bringing them to church on Sundays). But I think we need to broaden our perception of how and where we share the Gospel. In my case, I suck at "traditional" missionary work because people are scary. I can talk to people and hold conversations and be friendly, but it takes enormous effort and leaves me exhausted. I don't take naps on Sundays because I'm sleep deprived, I take naps because I just spent three hours talking to people at church. I'm perfectly content the rest of the week to spend hours by myself and not talk to anyone for days except Mike and my mom and grandma. I don't have anyone physically nearby to share the Gospel with, and the thought of trying to find someone makes me want to run screaming from the room in panic. And believe me, panic is NOT conducive to missionary work.
But there are other ways to do it. I am useless if I try to share the Gospel in ways that are foreign to my nature, but I can find ways that work with who I am instead of against it. That was my point in Sunday School--that we can find ways to begin with who and what we are and use that to our advantage. We can bloom not only where we are planted, but how we are planted as well.
So this is my way of putting my money where my mouth is and following Elder Bednar's counsel to share goodness. Sharing things that are good and bright and beautiful and hoping that my little trickle will contribute to the flood.
* * * * *
I Love the Lord
I first heard this song in a chapel in Portugal. We were there to pick my brother up from his mission and had just spent a week visiting different parts of the country. This Sunday was General Conference, and we had just gotten to the chapel where the members and missionaries were gathered to listen to it. Because of the time difference, the priesthood session was being broadcast to Portugal on Sunday morning instead of the middle of Saturday night. All the women were in the kitchen preparing a picnic lunch and the men were in the chapel, but the doors were open, and we arrived in time to sit in the hallway and hear the closing song. It was a profound experience after a week of travel and strange food and places and crazy bus adventures to listen to something that felt so still and holy.
I went off to college a few months after that and was given a recording of this song. I listened to it often in times of trouble and distress to recapture that feeling of holiness and to gain comfort both from the tune (which is probably my favorite hymn) and the words (which are taken from the Psalm of Nephi, one of my top 5 passages of scripture). I almost always feel better after listening to it. Also, the bass line gives me goosebumps.
No comments:
Post a Comment