Thoughts For This Week’s Reading:
I want to tell you the tale of the dishes.
Once there was a girl who’s dishwashewr broke (okay, spoiler alert…. That girl is me).
This meant she had to wash every…dish….by…. hand. She knew she was very blessed to even have a dishwasher, but the task proved to take more time and energy than she imagined.
Each night after dinner she would roll up her sleeves and get to work. Bubbles, scrubbing, rising, stacking, drying. It took her over an hour each night to complete the task that had normally taken minutes. By the end, an entire section of her kitchen counter would be stacked strategically all tall as she could get it.
It was a MOUNTAIN of dishes.
And each night she watched her family play and enjoy their summer activities without her while she washed.
One day she had an idea. Each morning she would wash all the breakfast dishes and a few stragglers from the night before. It was just a handful of dishes and took her a few minutes. Then after lunch she would wash any big pots/pans she used. She could handle that. It was such a small and simple change in her routine, but miraculously, it made a huge difference. That mountain of dishes turned into a small hill that she could quickly get through and off to enjoy those blissful summer evenings with her family.
And thus it is with life.
Too often we neglect the simple, daily effort to nourish our spirit and our relationship with Christ. To offer a simple prayer when we rise in the morning, take 5-10 minutes to read our scriptures, or act on a prompting we receive. Surely it can’t make that big of a difference.
Then when the trials come (and they always do) it can feel like an overwhelming, crushing, spiritual mountain to overcome. We have not done the work to have the endurance to climb the mountain, to obtain the spiritual tools to help us scale the walls safely, and to have a friend (our Savior) by our side to help pull us up when the terrain gets too hard.
Elder Clayton says:
“Over time, simple habits of belief lead to miraculous results… those who are deliberate about doing the “small and simple things”- obeying in seemingly little ways- are blessed with faith and strength that go far beyond the actual acts of obedience themselves and, in face, may seem totally unrelated to them. It may seem hard to draw a connection between the basic daily acts of obedience and solutions to the big, complicated problems we face. But they are related.”
“Whatsoever He Saith unto You, Do It”
So often we are like Naaman who “turned and went away in a rage,” when asked to simply wash 7 times in the river to heal his leprosy. How is washing in a filthy river related to his leprosy? How could that simple act possibly help him with his very real and serious problem?
So, what mountains are you facing right now? What burdens or trials are you carrying?
I have found my own personal strength and answers by asking myself this same question:
What simple, daily habits of faith can I work on that will “lead to miraculous results” in my life?
Lesson/ Family Scripture Study Ideas
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