All calls to serve are calls to serve others for Christ.
We do not choose the length, timing, or order of the callings we receive but all callings are meant to prepare us to live in eternal families.
When President Eyring speaks of Sister Eyring I get the feeling that she may die before next conference.
As a mother she didn’t force, she molded according to a vision of what she wanted to bring about.
When you came out of the water, you had accepted another call to serve. As a new covenant daughter of God, you made a promise and received an assignment in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which you were then confirmed a member. You covenanted with God to take upon yourself the name of Jesus Christ, to keep His commandments, and to serve Him.
For each one who makes these covenants, the service that the Lord calls him or her to do will be suited perfectly to that person. The covenant daughters and sons of God, however, all share one important and joyful call. It is to serve others for Him.
{President Russell M. Nelson said,} “To help another human being reach one’s celestial potential is part of the divine mission of woman. As mother, teacher, or nurturing Saint, she molds living clay to the shape of her hopes. In partnership with God, her divine mission is to help spirits live and souls be lifted. This is the measure of her creation. It is ennobling, edifying, and exalting.”
You cannot know when, or for what length of time, your personal mission will be focused on service in calls such as mother, leader, or ministering sister. The Lord, out of love, does not leave us the choice of the timing, duration, or sequence of our assignments. Yet you know from scripture and living prophets that all of these assignments will come, either in this life or in the next, to every daughter of God. And all of them are preparation for eternal life in loving families—“the greatest of all the gifts of God.”
You might reasonably ask how a man of any age can know what mothers need. It’s a valid question. Men can’t know everything, but we can learn some lessons by revelation from God. And we can also learn much by observation, when we take the opportunity to seek the Spirit to help us understand what we observe.
If we want to know if things as they really are then it must come not only through personal experience but also through Spirit-refined understanding of things we observe.
As nearly as I can discern, my wife, Kathleen, has followed that charge, given to our Father’s daughters. The key appears to me to be the words “she molds living clay to the shape of her hopes … in partnership with God.” She did not force. She molded. And she had a template for her hopes, and to which she tried to mold those she loved and mothered. Her template was the gospel of Jesus Christ—as I could see through prayerful observation over the years.
Leave a Reply