"The Thick of Thin Things"

Finals are next week and I just want to be invested in Christmas preparations, not worrying about exams, but learning is always valuable. In my Life Skills class last week, we studied Entitlement and all of the different, but always selfish, faces it can take, This week our lesson material focused on Giving Back. Pondering them side by side, I have realized that I too often let myself get pulled into what President Monson referred to as "the thick of thin things," especially, and ironically, during holiday seasons.

 “Often we live side by side but do not communicate heart to heart. There are those within the sphere of our own influence who, with outstretched hands, cry out, “Is there no balm in Gilead?”

“I am confident it is the intention of each member of the Church to serve and to help those in need. At baptism we covenanted to “bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light.” How many times has your heart been touched as you have witnessed the need of another? How often have you intended to be the one to help? And yet how often has day-to-day living interfered and you’ve left it for others to help, feeling that “oh, surely someone will take care of that need.”

“We become so caught up in the busyness of our lives. Were we to step back, however, and take a good look at what we’re doing, we may find that we have immersed ourselves in the “thick of thin things.” In other words, too often we spend most of our time taking care of the things which do not really matter much at all in the grand scheme of things, neglecting those more important causes.”

On our class discussion board, one of the prompts asked what service we would render if time and money were not a barrier. One of my classmates had a whole list of things she wanted to help with because of the experience of particular trials (the death of two babies, and a deaf son with a cochlear implant) in her life, and I realized that I often get so consumed with my own trials and the busyness of just daily mortality that I spend too much time looking inward and downward and miss seeing the important ways that I could make a difference if I would just take more notice of others by looking outward and upward. There is so much suffering around us that needs to be relieved, and it seems natural to look big and far, but as Charles Dickens so aptly portrayed with the disillusioned Mrs. Jellyby, there is no better place to start than in our own families. I need to try harder.