This is a continuation of The Invitation, a previously posted
blog challenge. We are now on Day 5. Please feel free to read the
other days and start at anytime! Incorporate this challenge to fit you!
Weekly, monthly, daily however it will work for you!
All material is original blog material written by Dixie. ( I just borrowed the idea ;)
Scripture suggestions are from my personal study, all thoughts and
challenges are from my personal history and my future as I too continue
to strive for more closeness to Christ.
Thought for the day: The life of Christ was not
about himself, but what he could do for others. His ministry upon this
earth was about healing, teaching, compassion, and finally in the end,
taking upon himself the burdens of all; that all might be saved if only
all would believe in him. Yet, to believe in him, to truly have faith,
requires that we become like him, in all aspects. That we learn to walk
as he walks. Today let us in our activities, in our lives, in our
busyness, put off the natural man for a moment and walk as Christ walks;
even let us bear up one another’s burdens.
When we were baptized we entered into a covenant with God. We
promised to take upon ourself the name of Jesus Christ, keep His
commandments, and serve Him to the end. We promised that we would not
only serve in certain ways that we think of when thinking of service;
but that we would promise to be “willing to bear one another’s burdens,
that they may be light” and “willing to mourn with those that mourn …
and comfort those that stand in need of comfort”.
Penny in the shoe: today, every time you feel the
penny in your shoe, think to soften your heart, look at others as you
want Christ to look at you….
challenge for the day: as you soften your heart,
open yourself up to be able to help another bear their burdens.
Prayerfully consider someone you might help. It might not be something
big or tragic, that is needed, it may only be a smile and few kinds
words, or a dinner preparation, a ride to the store or doctor, a visit
to lonely elderly in a nursing home, just anything. But find a way you
can ease the burden of someone else. However, be not weary in doing
so…..
suggested Scripture Reading. (reading made easy just click a link :) Galatians 6 Galatians 5:13–14 Mosiah 18:8
Journaling Thought: How can I emulate His love to those around me?
Try to See World from Others’ Perspective
Contributed By Church News
Ashley England and her family went to dinner at a pizzeria in China
Grove, North Carolina, this September and received what the local
television station, WBTV, called an “unexpected” note from a fellow
patron.
Mrs. England’s eight-year-old son, Riley, “is non-verbal and has been
through three major brain surgeries for a severe form of epilepsy,”
according to WBTV. During dinner the boy began to get “a little rowdy.”
“He threw the phone and started screaming,” Mrs. England told WBTV.
“The past few weeks have been very hard and trying for us—especially
with public outings. Riley was getting loud and hitting the table, and I
know it was aggravating to some people.”
Then, just as the family was ready to pack up and leave, a waitress appeared.
“‘I’ll try to do this without crying,’ the waitress told the family.
‘But another customer has paid for your bill tonight and wanted me to
give you this note.’
“The note read: ‘God only gives special children to special people.’”
In the weeks following the report, a
photograph of the note went viral.
That message, articulated in just one sentence to a frustrated
family, has relevance for all of us. It demonstrates compassion and
understanding—offered at a time when a family needed both.
“We hear what people say, we see what they do, but being unable to
discern what they think or intend, we often judge wrongfully if we try
to fathom the meaning and motives behind their actions and place on them
our own interpretation,” said President Spencer W. Kimball (
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], 95).
The England family doesn’t know who paid for their meal or left them
the note. Maybe it was someone who has also raised a special-needs child
or who loves a special-needs child. Maybe it was someone who has been
embarrassed by a child in public. Or maybe it was someone who simply
took the time to imagine what it would have been like to occupy a chair
at the Englands’ table.
In the final pages of the classic novel by Harper Lee,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
the narrator, a little girl nicknamed Scout, finds herself on the front
porch of her neighbor Boo Radley’s home. As she turns to leave, she
discovers she has never seen her neighborhood from this angle before. It
looks different. Just seeing the world as Boo sees it helps her
understand Boo a little better.
She realizes her father—who urged his children to try to see life
from another person’s perspective before making judgments—was right.
“One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his
shoes and walk around in them,” Scout said in the novel. “Just standing
on the Radley porch was enough.”
Having learned the important lessons of compassion and understanding,
Scout concludes there is really nothing else for her to learn—except
algebra.
The advice, from a fictional attorney living in the height of the
Depression in Maycomb, Alabama, is just as relevant in our own wards,
stakes, neighborhoods, and communities; we face problems we would
understand better if we saw the world around us from our neighbors’
front porches—or from their tables at the local pizzeria.
President Gordon B. Hinckley said that in our associations we should build and strengthen one another.
“It is a responsibility divinely laid upon us to bear one another’s
burdens, to strengthen one another, to encourage one another, to lift
one another, to look for the good in one another, and to emphasize that
good,” he said (
Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley [1997], 45).
President
Thomas S. Monson has asked Latter-day Saints to show increased kindness toward one another.
“We have no way of knowing when our privilege to extend a helping hand will unfold before us,” he said during his
April 2001 general conference address. “The road to Jericho each of us travels bears no name, and the weary traveler who needs our help may be one unknown.”
That’s the impact a stranger had on the England family, who told a
reporter that having one person care about their needs overshadowed the
rude and negative comments they often hear.
“To have someone do that small act towards us shows that some people
absolutely understand what we are going through and how hard it is to
face the public sometimes,” Mrs. England told WBTV.
“They made me cry, blessed me more than they know. … Little did he
know what struggles we had been facing lately, and this was surely
needed at that moment.”
We could all follow the stranger’s example and take time to imagine what it would be like to sit at another person’s table.
President Monson has extended to each of us the same invitation:
“May we ever be mindful of the needs of those around us and be ready
to extend a helping hand and a loving heart” (“Until We Meet Again,”
Ensign, Nov. 2008, 107).
This will be a great day! We will grow!
Love From Dixie!
