Today in Sunday School we were reading Mosiah 4 where King Benjamin is speaking to the people about the Atonement of Christ. At one point he talks about the way we should treat the poor around us. We did not discuss this in class, but in my own mind I had a few tangents that I would like to share.
Starting in verse 16 of chapter 4 King Benjamin begins talking about the way we should treat the poor. Frankly, he asks us to be free with what we have and not hold back anything. King Benjamin was talking about the physical care of these people, but I began to think of the spiritually poor people that are around us every day. Sometimes I am the one who is spiritually poor.
Verse 16 ". . . ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish." It is one thing to perish physically, but Christ has overcome that and given it to us as an automatic gift for choosing to come to Earth. To die spiritually is something much harder to recover from.
We need to share the spirit that we have with others around us all the time. I thought of the analogy of filling buckets. Whenever we interact with others, we should be building them up and letting the love of God into their lives, not taking spirituality out of their buckets by driving the spirit out of their lives. If we aren't doing this, they may drift farther and farther away from God. I also thought of something I learned back in my Seminary days. Our testimonies are candles. When we share our testimony with others we light their candle but by lighting their candle we did not diminish ours in any way. It is the same with the spirit. When we share the spirit, that doesn't mean that we personally have any less of it. In fact, our candles burn brighter than before.
I can be the person who makes another person's day better. I know that some days I am the one who needs my bucket filled, but if I spend my time filling the buckets of others I believe that I will turn around and realize that somebody has been filling mine.
