Awareness

The theme of today's testimony meeting, if it were to be summarized in five words, would be this: "God knows and loves you." At least, that's what everyone kept feeling struck by. Or to be more specific, everyone who stood up in sacrament meeting today said something like unto it.

It's not a statement I would dispute.

But interestingly enough, that's not what I was hearing--or rather, what I was feeling--every time someone said that. Any time someone mentioned God's awareness of our difficulties, I kept feeling that I need to work on my awareness; after all, it is through other people that He usually blesses us. And I haven't noticed as much as I should have.

For someone who writes and reads as often as I do, I go through long periods of time where I'm oblivious to everything around me: there are times I barely notice the seasons changing, where I (unintentionally, usually) disregard the stress of those around me, and times where I become so focused on what I'm doing that I lose track of everything else I don't a passionate and intense interest in.

But I realized something today: I'm supposed to have a passionate and intense interest in helping those around me. I'm supposed to apply myself to the pursuit of awareness instead of oblivion. I'm supposed to become one of the instruments in the hands of God that helps other people come to realize His awareness of them.

As I grow older and as I serve in more capacities, I come to realize more and more that we are not a gospel of talking. I'm good at the talking. Far too comfortable, I think, with the talking. It's the walking that I have trouble motivating myself to do. But as Westley states in The Princess Bride when the six-fingered man pretends he will be taking him back to his ship, "We are men of action. Lies do not become us."

And when we talk as though we're walking, and we're not walking at all--well, we're liars. And hypocrites. And lies and hypocrisy do not become us, either. I'm afraid that I've been a liar and a hypocrite.

I'm going to try to stop that. I have roommates; I have visiting teachees; I have a calling; I have friends. I may not change the whole world by changing the way I look at things, but I hope that I can have the guts to work on improving my own little corner of the world.