Thoughts After This Week's Relief Society Lesson

Yes, yes. This might more appropriately have been written on Sunday, but I didn't have time then. And I have time now. Or rather, to be more accurate, I am currently procrastinating my Composition Theory assignment for tomorrow. Actually, to be completely accurate, the process of writing this blog post will assist the mental activities required for the writing assignment for Comp Theory.

(The writing assignment, incidentally, is not the point: but it's an assignment to evaluate my own writing processes--how I formulate, how I edit, how I revise--and how those processes may vary from elective writing to school writing. If they vary. So here am I, writing something electively. And as I write, I'm evaluating myself. If I reach any conclusions I find worth sharing, I'll let y'all know at a later date.)

Anyway, the Relief Society lesson on Sunday was about gratitude. (Apropos, of course, since November is a month of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving with a capital T, of course, because every month of the year should be a month of thanksgiving.)

In the course of the lesson, the teacher drew a glass on the board and asked: "Is this half-full or half-empty?"

"It depends on your goal," a girl said. "If your goal is to empty it, then the glass is half-empty. But if your goal is to fill it, then your glass if half-full."

This response elicited a number of oohs and ahhs from girls who thought that particular insight was rather deep.

The teacher continued on, "This is like our blessings. So shouldn't we view it as half-full?"

While some of you may think, based on this blog, that I'm a particularly confrontational person, I don't like to cause big scenes in places like church. Or say anything that I think could potentially make someone feel bad. But not to put too fine a point on it: she was wrong.

If you don't believe me that she was wrong, please visit Psalms 23 and note that, when it comes to the gospel, our cups are never half anything. In fact, our cups are always overflowing. Heavenly Father doesn't do anything halfway. He didn't lead the Israelites halfway through the wilderness.

In fact, Heavenly Father likes things whole: He wants us to serve him with all of our might, mind, and strength. (As one of the sisters in the General Relief Society presidency put it during the Relief Society meeting a few years ago: he does not want us reading our scriptures with only one eye while tracking something else with the other, and he does not want us to pray with one eye closed and one eye opened . . . My older sister got a kick out of the idea of not reading the scriptures with one eye and elbowed me to let me know that I was obviously doomed since it's a physical impossibility for me to read with both eyes. But that's neither here nor there, which is probably why I included it in the parentheses.)

It may seem a technicality, but I thought it important to iterate to myself and now to you: our cups are running over. Always.

Not, mind you, that means people will always be grateful. Instead of whining about a half-empty glass, the most pessimistic people will find ways of whining about how a cup cannot contain all that water and, oh dear!, what a dreadful mess that's making . . .