The Small and Simple Things. A talk by Elder Raymond A. Besse

The Small and Simple Things

A talk by Elder Raymond A. Besse

Given April 13, 2014

I would like to start by sharing a quote by Sister Ann M. Dibb in the May 2009 edition of the Ensign: “The small and simple things you choose today will be magnified into great and glorious blessings tomorrow. Living each day as ‘an example of the believers’ Will help you to be happy and more confident". 

In this life we cannot always accomplish great things. We can only do small and simple things with great love. How very often we tend to look for the “grand plan”, or the big things we can do to make a big difference, all while the small and simple opportunities that are ever-present pass us by and we tend to look beyond the mark.

But big plans seldom work out, and big ideas seldom take off. Whereas the little, more achievable, the more straightforward and more immediate things, are the things that are right in front of us, those are the things that really matter and really move us forward.

It’s great to dream, but it’s better to do. After all, it’s usually the cumulative effect of so many little things, done persistently, and done well, that creates greatness.

In (Alma 37:6) it states; “By small and simple things, are great things brought to pass.” 

In our lives, whether in business or as members of the church, as we pay closer attention to making the most of the little opportunities that lie right in front of us, we will move naturally towards the dreams that matter most.

Recently in my daily scripture study with a friend of mine, we studied about Daniel and his friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

After they were carried into captivity in Babylon, Daniel and his friends asked to be fed vegetables and water rather than the rich food from the royal table.  Much of what would have been served on the royal table may have been sacrificed to the Babylonian gods or might have been a meat, such as pork, that would have been considered unclean to a Jewish person.   It was at the risk of his life, and that of his friends, that Daniel made such a request to the king’s official who was in charge of the young exiles, but Daniel knew the importance of faithfulness and obedience to God.

Later in their lives, Daniel and his friends faced much greater tests of their obedience to the One True God.  It was the faithfulness and obedience to God in the small things, like food choice, that refined their resolve when greater tests came along.  When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego faced the king’s fury and the fiery furnace because they would not bow down to the image that the king had made, they exercised their faith in God and stayed true to the One who could save them.  The same is true with Daniel as he faced the lion’s den because of his refusal to bow to the king.

I want to offer to you a though as we consider the obedience and faithfulness in the small things that God allows in our lives.

It’s highly probable that if Daniel had compromised by eating the king’s food, he would have compromised about other things as well, like bowing to his image.  It would have been easy for him to think ‘Oh, I’ll still pray to God, but I’ll just bow to this thing to spare my life, because, after all, I can do a lot of ministry for God if I survive’.  That wasn’t Daniel or his uncompromising buddies Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 

When you obey God in the small and simple things, it becomes a lot easier to obey Him in the big things.  That’s when God shows up.  He can shut the mouths of lions and protect you from the flames.”

Recently in my life the Holy Spirit has cautioned me of the need to do a better job of being faithful in the small and simple things.  I want God to find me faithful no matter the size of the test, but it is through those seemingly small and relatively insignificant tests that God builds my faith for the larger tests.  

Our path to success is uncompromising resolve in big and small things alike. When you obey God in the small things, it becomes a lot easier to obey Him in the big things, and honestly, sometimes we need to just stop and realize there really are no "small" acts of obedience in that they all matter. They all count. They all have the ability to make a HUGE difference in our lives. 

As I touch on the subject of obedience, I am reminded of my good friend Alayna Winkle, she once shared with me the words of her former Missions President’s wife “Obedience brings blessings, but obedience with exactness brings miracles.”

Sometimes the big acts of obedience aren't even the ones that can mess us up in life. It is kind of like the way we probably won't trip up on a huge boulder sitting in our path. We can just easily walk around it. But it can be those small stones, they can trip us like none other. We need to constantly be on the look out for those small acts of obedience we may be overlooking and stumbling on.

In closing my dear brothers and sisters, I ask you to search your daily lives and contemplate if there is an area in your life that seems small and insignificant where God is calling you to take a stand and be obedient. Maybe there is an area where you have been trying to convince yourself that it is such an insignificant issue that it really doesn’t matter what you do. Could it be that God is testing your obedience in the small things in preparation for a greater test in the future?  

It is my prayer that you and I both will be obedient to God in the small and the simple things in this life, and may our hearts stay tender, aware, and willingly obedient in the smallest of ways. 

Of theses things I pray, most humbly in the sacred name of our savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jews and Mormons: Similarities and Differences

(Above is the Latter-day Saint Assembly Hall in Salt Lake City, Temple Square featuring the hexagram, a sign of the Jewish faith)

Introduction

        To a large extent, Jewish awareness of Mormonism, however minimal, remains negative, due mainly to Latter-day Saint practices widely regarded as offensive in the Jewish community: Missionary work(or proselytizing) and baptism for the dead (namely, posthumous baptism by proxy of non-Mormons, usually ancestors of someone who is LDS). Most Jews are unlikely to be aware, however, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has attempted to respect Jewish sensitivities on both these issues, which are, after all, fundamental practices of Mormonism. In an agreement submitted to Israeli authorities when the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies was opened, the president of the church (President Ezra Taft Benson) and the president of Brigham Young University (Elder Jeffery R. Holland) signed a solemn commitment forbidding Latter-day Saints proselyting in Israel, and threatened any student, member of the faculty, or staff violating that commitment with immediate expulsion from the Jerusalem Center and from the country. Similarly, respecting Jewish sensitivity, especially after the Shoah (holocaust), the church agreed in 1995 to stop the practice of baptism for the dead applied in a wholesale manner to Jews (although reaffirming the right of individual Latter-day Saints to baptize their own direct ancestors).

        Therefore, given that Mormonism in not a significant factor in the concerns of most Jews. why do I believe that Jewish-Mormon dialogue is important for both sides? My answer is given on three levels: general, Jewish, and Mormon.

        First, in general, many people of diverse backgrounds today increasingly recognize the urgent need for increased inter religious dialogue and understanding, all the more so in our era of the 'global village' and at a time when the whole world is threatened by fanatical and fundamentalist religiopolitical terror. as radical Catholic theologian Hans Hung has said, without peace among the world's religions, there will be no peace among the nations. In my part of the world in particular, it is an unfortunate fact that religion is rarely a force for peace and is usually used (or abused) to exacerbate conflicts that are basically national and political, and not theological, in nature. we need, therefore, to encourage inter religious dialogue wherever possible, and with whomever possible.

        Second, looking at inter religious, specifically Jewish-Mormon relations, from a Jewish perspective, the Jewish people in general and the State of Israel in particular do not have many friends in the world. Some of the decades-old Jewish alliances with mainline and liberal Christian churches over domestic American agendas such as civil rights and civil liberties are now increasingly strained due to some of these churches' involvement with overt criticism of Israel, support for Palestine's, and calls for divestiture and even boycotts of Israel, of Israeli universities and academicians, or of companies doing business in Israel. Moreover, given the resurgence of European anti-semitism, it seems to me an obvious Jewish interest to foster relations with Churches, like the Church of Jesus Christ, that have extended their hands in friendship to the Jewish people and the state of Israel and that have no history of consistent anti-semitism. Various Christian churches are struggling with, or overtly repudiating, the supersessionist theology that typified so much of their historical attitudes toward the Jewish people and Judaism. The Latter-day Saint record is far more positive. For Example:

        Ye need not any longer hiss, nor spurn, nor make game of the Jews, nor any of the remnant of the house of Israel; for behold, the Lord remembereth his covenant unto them, and he will do unto them according to that which he hath sworn (3 Nephi 29:8)

        Specifically, given the diminishing numbers of Jews in America (in absolute terms, and all the more as a proportion of the American population ), and in light of the fact that-contrary to Arab propaganda-the Jewish-Israeli lobby does not control the American congress and has never been able to stop sales of advanced weapons to Arab countries (like Saudi Arabia) hostile to Israel, it seems clear that the only true power the American Jews posses is the power of moral persuasion. Persuasion, however, requires reaching out in dialogue to a broad spectrum of communities with whom the Jews have not previously had extensive dialogue, including the Latter-day Saints, who are growing in numbers and influence.


        Third, though of course i cannot speak for the church officially, it seems to me from my encounters as a member of the church and a Jew, that there is a growing interest among the church for a duologue with Jewish people, who occupy a special place in Mormon thought. Latter-day Saints, seeing themselves as physically descended from ancient Israel (primarily from the house of Ephraim), often feel a special kinship Jewish whom they sometimes refer to as "cousins" of "the house of Israel" of the tribe of Judah, leading them to regard themselves and Jews as "two houses of Israel". In many respects this sense of kinship is reinforced when latter-day Saints portray themselves as a new Israel, suffering persecution and wandering on the "great trek" in the wilderness until they came to an American Zion. we shall return later to this LDS topic of physical lineage. But what is no less important for Jewish-Mormon dialogue is growing :LDS effort to relate to Jews, not as an Old Testament tribe but as a living religious community.


        So for different and legitimate reasons, Latter-day Saints and Jews can recognize not only the general need for religious encounter, but also a specific common interest in a special dialogue with each other, a dialogue that will not eliminate the fundamental differences between them, but will, rather, enhance those differences with greater mutual understanding and respect.


        That special dialogue suffered a setback some years ago, when the security situation in Israel led to the closing, for the time being, of the Jerusalem Center for near Eastern Studies, despite valiant efforts of the BYU administration in Jerusalem and Provo to keep it open under difficult circumstances. The center was a major focus for Jewish-Mormon dialogue. To the best of my knowledge, no other university in the world brought some 850 young people annually to study in Jerusalem over of years. Indeed, few, if any, Israeli universities have programs for oversees students coming from all over the world that can approach that number. In fact, few colleagues in Jewish studies around the world, who are often lucky to teach a few dozen students a year, taught, as I did, 850 students every year, all of whom were potential ambassadors of goodwill in the relationship between Jews and Latter-day Saints.


        Having explained why I think Jews and Latter-day Saints need to engage each other in dialogue, I would now like to describe some examples of the similarities and differences, on a general level, and then deal with two specific issues, each exemplifying both similarities and differences between the two communities. Understand each other's terminology and frame of reference in an obvious requirement for effective communication.

(Above is the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center in Jerusalem)