Last updated on December 22nd, 2024 at 10:11 pm
December 15, 2024
Here is the best thing I heard (What?), saw (Eye.), and read (Read.) this week, as well as the best idea (💡) I developed.
What?
- [Sheri Dew] “What worries you the most … when you look at everything they’re dealing with that we probably didn’t deal with at their age?”
[Elder D. Todd Christofferson] “One aspect of it, I guess you could say, is distraction. There’s so much at their fingertips, literally and figuratively, that can draw their attention. So many voices, so many competing voices, so much that would draw them or anyone away from the Spirit, away from that personal, individual, spiritual guidance that comes quietly and in quiet moments. And so, such a cacophony of voices around them that they have to learn to intentionally find time to be with God, so to speak.
“I was thinking of an interview I heard years ago on the radio of Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop in South Africa. And the interviewer asked a very perceptive question, he said, ‘has anything changed in the way you pray over the years?’
“And he said, ‘yes, as a matter of fact, it has. Earlier in my life, my prayers were a list, you know, a long list of things I needed or problems I wanted to have solved. And now more often, I’m quiet.’
“And he said, I sit with the Lord. He said, it’s like a fire in winter. It warms you. You don’t have to be anybody special. It just warms you. And I thought, what a beautiful metaphor.
“You know, the quiet time in prayer or meditation and studying the scriptures in the seminaries and the institute classes and in conversations with friends. But times where you really shut the world out, so to speak, or at least concentrate on what the Lord is trying to communicate to you. It’s more and more of an effort, I think, to find that in your life or create it consistently in your life.”
Eye.
- “A person might say: ‘My spouse and I have spent thousands of dollars and visited many specialists trying to get pregnant with no success. Will we ever have children?’
“That’s a really significant worry. So we shift that into the hope. The hope is we want to have a child. What is it that’s in my power that I can do about this? Well, I can continue to fast and pray. I will think more seriously about adoption, and in some cases, there’s nothing I can do. I’ll just trust in the Lord and his timing, no matter what. It is not easy to have a hope in Jesus Christ. There are times when it’s hard to remember that in a future day, God will wipe all the tears from our eyes, but I testify that he will.
“Whenever we are worried about something, we can use that as a trigger to ask ourselves, what is it that we want to have happen and then act to make that thing happen. This helps us to cheer up our hearts and remember that we are free to act, as [the prophet] Jacob taught. And if we can’t do anything about a troubling situation, then we can exercise our faith by following Elder [Richard G.] Scott’s advice to studiously strive to completely forget it and lay the burden at the feet of the Savior by trusting that He will heal the wounds that we cannot. If my hope is centered in a temporal outcome, eventually I will be disappointed. However, if my hope is completely centered in Christ, I will always have the courage to move forward.” - “Elder Richard G. Scott came and he did a mission tour, and on that mission tour, I had a chance to ask him a question. I was worried because my patriarchal blessing didn’t say anything about the gift of charity, so I was wondering if I would ever be able to have this gift. Now, in retrospect, this was probably a silly thing to be worried about, and I probably shouldn’t have bothered Elder Scott with my question. But I asked him, what if your patriarchal blessing doesn’t mention that you have a certain spiritual gift? Can you still receive it?
“I’ve always remembered his response. He said: ‘Pray for the gift, act as though you have it, and the gift will be yours.’ That phrase, act as though you had the gift, really stands out to me. If God came to us right now and said, I give you the gift of charity, how would we act this afternoon?
“I hope that we’ll take Mormon’s invitation to pray with all the energy of our heart for the gift of charity, and then let’s act as though we’ve already received this gift. I admit, it will not always be easy to manifest charity, and we’ll probably have to do a lot of re-do’s. But I believe that through the strengthening power of Jesus Christ, the gift of charity can be ours.” - “One of my favorite examples of somebody who labored diligently in her calling is Aurelia Rogers. Aurelia Rogers is the founder of Primary in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although she was not formally called as a primary president at the time, she established the first primary in 1878 in Farmington, Utah. She used her experiences as a mother and from the Spirit to organize the primary program, even though she didn’t have formal training. She just saw the needs of the children and wanted to do what would be best for them.
“Aurelia got approval for the organization and laid the groundwork for its growth and later served on the general primary board from 1893 until 1922. Aurelia didn’t feel like she had much success in the first seven years as she was working on primary. So she worked with parents to help them understand the importance of it.
“Today, primary serves over a million children around the world. Now, notice that Aurelia Rogers was laboring diligently for seven years and still not feeling like she was getting the results she wanted. I’m so grateful she was creative, proactive, open to the Spirit’s guidance.”
Read.
“‘You have to just draw something that you hope is funny’: How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy” | BBC | December 5, 2024:
- “Peanuts remained remarkably consistent despite the relentless publishing schedule, and Schulz would not let the expectations of his millions of fans become a distraction. He said: ‘You have to kind of bend over the drawing board, shut the world out and just draw something that you hope is funny. …
“‘I suppose when a composer is composing well, the music is coming faster than he can think of it, and when I have a good idea I can hardly get the words down fast enough. I’m afraid that they will leave me before I get them down on the paper. Sometimes my hand will literally shake with excitement as I’m drawing it because I’m having a good time. Unfortunately, this does not happen every day.’
“Schulz generally worked five weeks in advance. On 14 December 1999, fans were dismayed to learn that he would be hanging up his pen because he had cancer. He said that his cartoon for 3 January 2000 would be the final daily release. It would be followed on 13 February with the final strip for a Sunday newspaper. He died one day before that last strip ran.” - It is no joke to maintain a relentless publishing schedule. I look up to Charles Schulz and I am impressed by what he was able to accomplish over decades of incredible effort.
💡
Develop a detailed plan in response to the question: ‘If you retired tomorrow, what would you do with your life?’
- This idea was inspired by a conversation I had earlier this week with my co-worker who was visiting from Hong Kong. He actually asked me this question, and I didn’t feel that I had an answer that inspired me.