President Spencer W. Kimball
“Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I unto thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.
“And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.” (See Acts 3:1–7.)
“Such as I have.” All of us need to ponder those words. Do we, too, have something we need to share? Yes! We have the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of peace, the gospel of joy. We have truths that can make any person better and more fulfilled, any marriage happier and sweeter, any home more heavenly. We have the priesthood power of God to bless our homes and lives and the lives of others. Yes, it is to ourselves, our homes, our quorums, our classes, our Church assignments that we must carry more energetically those things that we have received. And it is to our nonmember neighbors and associates that we are now asked to also “give such as we have.” The Lord has commanded us to do so. We must lengthen our stride and must do it now.[i]
The prayer over the water/wine in the Sacrament has the words “do it” for which Pres. Kimball became famous. We give what we have, the Love of the Lord Jesus Christ for all His children, to lift them up. “do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them.”[ii] As we go about serving others, it is not about fulfilling a self-righteous “to do list” done out of a feeling of unworthiness that makes us over zealous to do some good for someone. Neither is it about making ourselves look good to others, to the Bishop or other church leaders. We serve only because we are commanded to so, have been so richly blessed by God that we are overflowing with grace and love, often in silence, often without giving it a thought, often without thinking about our own needs. When we serve in this way, we have a prayer in our hearts to serve like the Savior, in humility, with love and patience, not afraid of rejection or scorn, but desiring to lift others. There is no judgment or condemnation in this loving service. As Joseph Smith once said, “… The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls; we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs. …”[iii]
Between the thought to serve and the action often lies a gulf too hard for most of us to overcome on our own efforts. Thus we need grace to do more than humanly possible. T.S Elliot talks about this in his poem, “The Hollow Men”
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the KingdomBetween the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long[iv]
As each of our breaths move us from one moment to another, so does each weekly Sacrament meeting with the reenactment of the Lord’s Supper move us from one Christ-like deed to another. Power to do it seeps into every pore as we commit ourselves to follow Christ. We move from the thought to serve others, to the actual serving, from the desire to love others to the actual loving, and from the hope of lifting others as Peter did, to actually having the divine grace filled power to do so.
[i] https://www.lds.org/ensign/1975/09/always-a-convert-church-some-lessons-to-learn-and-apply-this-year?lang=eng
[ii] Doctrine and Covenants Section 20:79
[iii] History of the Church, 5:24; spelling modernized; paragraph divisions altered; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on June 9, 1842, in Nauvoo, Illinois; reported by Eliza R. Snow.
[iv] Eliot, T.S. “The Hollow Men.” Poetry Archives. N.p., 2009. Web. 16 Jan. 2016.
