Sunday, March 25, 2012

The Paradox of Man

This past week has been a pretty busy one so it's taken me a week to get around to blogging about this but last week a girl in our ward gave a really great talk that I really loved. Here is what she talked about.

Her talk was based on President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk from Octoboer 2011 conference titled "You Matter to Him." Find the full talk here.

In this talk, he talks about the great paradox of man: compared to God, man is nothing; yet we are everything to God. We are less than we suppose but we are also greater than we suppose.

We are less than we suppose:
"Astronomers have attempted to count the number of stars in the universe. One group of scientists estimates that the number of stars within range of our telescopes is 10 times greater than all the grains of sand on the world's beaches and deserts."


Think of all the sand on just one beach or in one desert. It is unfathomable to think of how many grains there are in the universe and even more unfathomable to think of how many stars there are. With so many stars, so much sand, so many universes and so many people, it is easy to feel like we are nothing.

We are greater than we suppose:
Although man is nothing, "the worth of souls is great in the sight of God." (D&C 18:10)
We matter to God. 
I, Aleisha Morgan, matter to God.
YOU matter to God.
He loves each of His children with an unconditional love.

That means that when you feel like nothing, when you feel like no one knows your suffering, when you feel that your life is so hard you cannot go on, GOD LOVES YOU. He is mindful of you. He will always be by your side. Celebrating the successes and weeping for the challenges. He is a constant friend, a loving Father.

Now we must ask ourselves, 
"Does God matter to me?" 
Do I celebrate my successes with Him?
Do I share with Him my trials?
Do I go to Him in weakness?
Do I thank Him for my strengths?
Is Heavenly Father my friend?
What is my relationship with Him?

These are the suggestions this girl gave in her talk about how we can develop a relationship with our Father in Heaven.

1. Talk to Him:
  • have meaningful conversations - if you were wanting to make a new friend with someone, you wouldn't do that by saying the same thing to them every time you saw them or by talking to them once a year
  • talk to Him as you would a friend - you would talk to them every day, even multiple times in one day. You would tell them meaningful things about yourself.
2. Learn about Him:
  • when you want to find out more about someone new you talk to their friends, you stalk them on facebook (admit it, we all do it :)), you talk to them! 
  • this works with God too! (except he doesn't have facebook). But you can talk to people who know Him (church leaders, General Authorities)
  • You can read His words (scriptures)

3. You will recognize Him and you will trust Him:
  • think of someone in your life who you know very well. Do you trust them? Would you do anything they asked even if you didn't know why they were asking?
  • We must be this same way with God. Sometimes he will tell us to do something and we may not know why. To strengthen our relationship with Him, we must be willing to step into the dark and do what He asks. 
4. You will live in a manner that He wants to be around you:
  • If you have a new friend, you will make sure that they want to spend time with you
  • You won't ignore them, you won't talk bad about them, you will be kind, you will be loving, you will love those around you so they can trust that you love them too
  • We must live in a manner that the Spirit of God can dwell with us always.

I really love this advice and this analogy to building a relationship with God. Gaining a new friend is something we can all relate to. When I look around at the world and all the blessings I have, it is easy to see that God loves me. The daily beauties and tender mercies that surround us are evidence of the unconditional love that he has for all His children. If we look deep enough, we can find blessings in our life and see the love that God has for us. 



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2 comments:

  1. really enjoyed this. those are all really good suggestions and a great way of thinking about your relationship with god. thanks for posting it!

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  2. I taught in Relief Society on fast Sunday last month and based my lesson on this talk because the phrase "Compared to God, man is nothing, yet we are everything to God" is what stuck with me the most from last Conference. So excited for Conference this Sunday!

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