The Plan of Happiness

I teach the nine-year olds in Primary. They are a great class. Five awesome girls and one very smart little boy. I started out this year on the Old Testament with where everything in Mormonism starts - the Plan. The plan of salvation.

"Ohhhhnooooo, Sister Ellsworth."

"Not the Plan of Salvation!"

"I hate the Plan of Salvation!"

"I'm not even going to try to make it to heaven. It's toooo hard."

They were so stressed out. Why?

They thought it was too hard. They thought they could never make it. They thought the entire Gospel was a big yardstick and they were never going to measure up. I hate to admit it but I kind of thought this way too.

We went through the plan piece by piece and finally got to the last, the greatest, the bestest "Celestial Kingdom." This is where we all want to be. I was a little nervous. A little girl in our class was going to stand up and read the scripture on the requirements for the Celestial Kingdom.

Eeeek. I thought. Can I handle this? Can they handle this?

So she read D&C 76 in verses 50-53. "What?" "Wait a second." Where was the long list about eating vegan, plant-based foods, having your kids to bed by 7:00, going running for a half an hour each day and wearing designer ankle boots? All that had to be in there somewhere.''

But it wasn't.

Here were the requirements:

1. Believe in Jesus Christ
2. Be baptized
3. Keep the commandments SO that we can be cleansed of our sins
4. Receive the Holy Ghost
5. Overcome by faith

I asked them how many of them had a testimony of Jesus Christ. All hands up.

How many have been baptized? All hands.

How many of you try to keep the commandments? Repent when you make a mistake? All hands.

And they all had the gift of the Holy Ghost at baptism. And the fact that they are coming to Church is evidence of their faith. Eeeeasy peeesy lemon squeazy. They had ALREADY ARRIVED and they did not even know it. THEY WERE THERE. They had MET THE REQUIREMENTS. Of course there might be a bit left to overcome in life. But with faith they could do it. And so could I.

It was the Plan of Happiness after all.

Comments

Don't Change Locations, Change What's Inside

We spent a lot of years early in our marriage pursuing happiness. And we made the same fatal mistake that most young adults make when they start seeking happiness. We decided that happiness was somewhere where we were not. We moved to Boston and took a job with a lucrative startup company. But despite living in a nice townhome with our two adorable little boys we spent our days wishing we were somewhere else. When we had made it big, when we moved back by family and bought a big home, then we would be happy. Boston was just a stop on the road to where we wanted to be. We worked hard very very hard and we saved our money. We didn’t take time to walk the Freedom trail or to eat lobster. We were sure that just around the next bend in the corner, after this phase of life, we would arrive at our destination. . We invested little in our relationships with each other instead investing in work and church and feeling perpetually more and more...

Waiting for Sunrise

On an early morning run I was captivated by this little family of sunflowers waiting patiently for the sun to crest the mountains behind my house. I was reminded of the times in my life when I had endured months, even years of darkness. But although I was surrounded by darkness, my life was never dark . Because of my knowledge that God loved me, that he had a purpose for my life, I did not give up, I did not abandon hope. And eventually, we experienced a resurrection morning. These sunflowers reminded me that as certainly as the rising of the sun - these trials will have an end . Perhaps no moment is more joyous than when - necks outstretched - we catch sight of the first faint glimmers of hope on the eastern horizon. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

How to Be Perfect

I read the scripture: "Be ye therefore perfect..." And it gave me some pause for thought. I am myself what you would call a Type A personality. I think the problem with perfection is when we think of perfection we think of quantity and we think of being the most like everything else. When we humans create things we mass produce. We want everything the same, of a certain "quality" which means it is the most like everything else, the most normal . So when we say someone's "perfect" we are either saying that they are very symmetrical and a lot like the mean. What we are really saying that they are just AVERAGE. We are all trying to be average. To lose weight or to gain it. To have the talents that everyone else has. The home that looks like the one that everyone else wants. But have we ever stopped to think who we are and what we want in our life? God does not make NORMAL. He does not make symmetrical. He makes in...

God's Rain

Search This Blog