It's way easy to be harder on yourself than it is to be hard on other people. Why? Why can't you just love you for what you can do? Uchtdorf put it best when he said "if we look at ourselves only through our mortal eyes, we may not see ourselves as good enough. But our Heavenly Father sees us as who we truly are and who we can become." Just cut yourself some slack, friend.
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| Allow His grace to carry us. |
The majority of President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk was about simplifying and thinking about the beauty of the pure, unadulterated gospel. However, towards the end he starts taking about this very struggle that we as humans go through. We are constantly unsure of ourselves and doubting what we are capable of doing.
He goes on to reference several other humans that had these same doubts: Moses, the great prophet; Saul, the king; and Gideon, who ended the worshiping of Baal among the Israelites. Hey, at least we're in good company. He finishes this thought with a bit of anaphora, repeating the phrase "his grace." This helped tie up his talk by compelling the listener to this about the atonement of Christ and the grace it provides. It was an easily noticeable rhetorical device, but that doesn't diminish the profound emotional effect that it could have.
I love the comparisons that Elder Uchtdorf presents. He generally explains with stories and in this conference he also referenced a humorous story at the beginning of his talk. But for me, comparisons are the most helpful because they give me a solid criteria that I can compare myself to.
ReplyDelete^I agree: the gospel's full of many difficult-to-grasp concepts, and President Uchtdorf's always been good at boiling these down into easy to understand analogies. (Side note to the OP: I appreciated the simplicity of a post based on a talk about simplifying)
ReplyDeleteIf we connect his "simplify" message with his little pep talk, I think we could say he was trying to get us to simplify our image of ourselves. To cut away the burdens and guilt and imperfections we carry, as well as cut away the pride we may carry about other things. Simply love.
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