What is the
greatest gift you can give to another?
Is it your time? Your
concern? Sacrificing something that
means a lot to you? Certainly which gift
is best depends on the situation. There
is one gift that the Savior often gave that may not be obvious.
"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It
is more blessed to give than to
receive" (Acts 20:35). Because so
much happiness comes from being able to make a positive contribution for
others, sometimes the best thing we can do for them is to be helped by them.
When we help others there
is often a tendency to think of ourselves as above them, at least in some
sense, even if we love and respect them.
It takes humility, and true love, to let others serve us so that they
can feel happy and elevated. To be
clear, that does not mean that we should be selfish. It simply means that when others try to do
nice things for us, and we let them, we are giving them a key to happiness.
Why is it so intuitive to us that we should accept Christ's sacrifice for us, and yet so difficult for us to allow others to do the dishes for us, give us rides to the grocery store, or any other
small thing? Zion is to be of one heart
and one mind. I do not believe that that
can occur without a constant flow of giving and receiving between all of the
saints. I am not saying that we should
limit the amount that we help others.
What I am saying is that we
should pair out willingness to serve others with a willingness to be served. From experience I know that sometimes the latter is harder,
The following comes from the life of the
Savior:
"And, behold, a woman in the
city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the
Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet
behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them
with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with
the ointment" (Luke 7:37-38).
I
think that most people in Christ's situation would feel a little embarrassed
about amount of affection the woman was showing. But instead of pushing her away, the Savior
gave her the priceless gift of the opportunity to serve the Son of God. Sometimes the best way to rescue the damsel in
distress is to let her rescue you. The
word "let" doesn't mean that you didn't legitimately need
rescuing. It may be as simple as acknowledging
something beneficial that she did for you that she might not have thought was
important. It may be that you could have
turned to someone else but chose her instead.
Balance
is difficult, but when the most important principles are in our hearts they
emerge naturally in our actions. So serve
others. Love them, help them and
sacrifice for them. But among all that, let
others love you back.
"Coupelle opalescente Etling - Etling opalescent dish," no changes made, by Etienne https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode
No comments:
Post a Comment