This is the work or the stewardship of the home teacher: to feed, to nourish and quench the thirst of the sheep who are assigned to him as a shepherd.
There are some elements of bureaucracy which cannot help but occasionally produce some irritation and perhaps frustration. We ask you to look beyond any irritations or inconvenience in Church administration. We ask you to focus and concentrate on the simple, sublime, spiritually nourishing, and saving principles of the gospel. We ask you to stand steady. We ask you to be faithful in your stewardships as [shepherds] of the Church.
I've been thinking, as I try to figure out how to be a good ministering sister and…ministering mother and ministering wife and ministering friend too, I guess…how Heavenly Father works so efficiently through things we might have to do anyway. Often "ministering" (at home or out of the home) feels like another thing to do. And it is! But it's also so often just the thing I need—whether it's playing a game with one of my kids when I'm too busy to play a game, and then finding myself unexpectedly refreshed by it—or delivering treat after treat to a neighbor whose face I've never even seen because she doesn't answer my texts or the door, and after a year I realize I've started almost loving her anyway—or serving in my Primary calling and thinking every week "how did I grow to like these funny kids so much?"
Those "bureaucratic" (or, I thought by extension, mundane and duty-related) parts of my life, at church or at home, are the vehicles for the things I really need to learn to do. The things I want to learn to do! And when I can look beyond the "irritation and inconvenience" of it all and just "stand steady," I start to learn a little about what it really means to be a shepherd for God's sheep.
I like this. And the idea of these … I don’t duties etc being actually the things we need. And, … I really like this lovely picture of a sheep. :)
ReplyDeleteHAhahaha. Yes. A very nice sheep. One of the best.
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