Food for Thought

As I fell into bed last night I mumbled something to my sweetheart about wanting to just stay there for one day, one entire day.  Because it wasn't going to happen I picked up the Ensign (it always invigorates my soul) and read the following from Dieter F. Uchtdorf:

"while the Atonement is meant to help us all become more like Christ, it is not meant to make us all the same. Sometimes we confuse differences in personality with sin. We can even make the mistake of thinking that because someone is different from us, it must mean they are not pleasing to God. This line of thinking leads some to believe that the Church wants to create every member from a single mold—that each one should look, feel, think, and behave like every other. This would contradict the genius of God, who created every man different from his brother, every son different from his father."

It can be it's own challenge teaching children that different isn't good or bad.  Different is just different.  My son pulled me by the hand to an oversized gum ball machine he found in an ice cream shop we were in last night.  "Which color do you like?" I asked him.  He pointed to a large, red, shiny gum ball.  I thought how striking the red looked surrounded by the cobalt blues, sun kissed oranges, vibrant yellows and whites.  The very thing that made the gum ball machine so attractive was it's variety in colors.  If it had held only hundreds of his favorite red gum balls it wouldn't have been nearly so beautiful. 

Thank heavens for the loud, the shy, the funny, the reverent, the classy, the flamboyant, the straight arrow and wild card.  

Congratulations to Nicky and his variety of friends 

for earning their Arrows of Light.