Monday, December 9, 2013

Love only requires one skill

This week has been better than last week, I suppose.  We whizzed through the stomach flu, but everyone has colds so no one feels very good.  Archie has some strange illness that I can't figure out.  He gets a fever in the afternoon and evening, but then it goes away without any medicine.  He just wants to sit in my lap so I watched an entire series, 16 hour long episodes, of another Korean drama.  It was so good!!!  But I felt very guilty about watching t.v. during the day.  I don't normally do that.

I'm teaching Charles' Sunday School class now and so I've taught two times so far.  They are a rough crowd!  They're either talking loudly and hitting each other or when I finally get their attention and ask a question they're all staring at me blankly.  Hello???  And there is a new curriculum that is very vague and strange because you're supposed to teach by the spirit.  I think the concept of teaching by the spirit is a good one, but a little direction would be so helpful for me -- especially because I have a hard time thinking on my feet.  I can have a conversation with someone for hours, but if I'm just standing up in front of people my mind goes blank and I'm barely coherent.  It's sad.  So there is a list of topics to choose from and the one I chose for yesterday was "Serving in the Church."  There are some great conference talks about that and a story from the Ensign this month so I was reading them things and asking questions.  At the end I gave them a plastic spoon with this story:

One day a man said to God, “God, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like.

God showed the man two doors. Inside the first one, in the middle of the room, was a large round table with a large pot of stew. It smelled delicious and made the man’s mouth water, but the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to {mosimage}reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.

The man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. God said, "You have seen Hell."

Behind the second door, the room appeared exactly the same. There was the large round table with the large pot of wonderful stew that made the man's mouth water. The people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking.

The man said, "I don't understand."

God smiled. “It is simple,” He said, “Love only requires one skill. These people learned early to feed one another. Those who are hungry are greedy people, and they think only of themselves.

But then the girls were flipping each other with the spoons!  I swear they are worse than the Sunbeams who at least are a little cowed by authority, sheesh!  But I just smiled, it really wasn't bothering me that much, and I loved that concept of just loving other people.  I've been thinking a lot about the scripture Moroni 7: 47-48 -- Charity doesn't come naturally to everyone so like other gifts, we have to pray for it.  I'm going to try to pray for it every day. 

1 comment:

Jenn said...

I decided to sign in to blogger finally and go look at what people have posted recently. So, this post was from a year ago...but I don't remember ever reading it. I'm so glad you shared this. I am the same way with teaching. My mind goes completely blank! That class sounds rough. Are you still teaching them? Anyway, great heaven/hell story you shared. I will definitely use that at some point. :)

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