So, What Did You Learn in Church Today?

This is a question I remember being asked frequently on Sunday afternoons as we ate lunch after church. As a child, this puts you on the spot; but it also encourages you to think about what you learned. In honor of this tradition, I thought every Sunday (or Monday, as time permits) I would share 'what I/we learned in Church today'. One thing that is cool about the LDS church is that everyone learns the same lesson, or close to the same lesson, each Sunday; so if you have something to add, leave a comment!

Yesterday in Relief Society we had a lesson on repentence from the Joseph Smith manual. The basis of the lesson was the story of when Martin Harris borrowed the 116 pg manuscript and lost it. (I don't have my manual with me, so this is all by memory). Upon finding out the manuscript was lost, Joseph cried out to Heavenly Father, taking complete responsiblity for the loss of the pages because it was his calling to keep them safe. It was interesting to me that he never blamed Martin Harris. I would have blamed him. Why didn't he keep a better eye on them? Why didn't he keep them in his hands every moment of every day? Weren't they important enough? But Joseph new is was his mistake. He kept asking for permission to do something the Lord didn't want him to do--and the Lord took this opportunity to teach him a lesson. I think it is interesting how the one of the first steps of repentence is admiting you did something wrong in the first place--not blaming someone else (Martin Harris!) or deciding it wasn't that big of a deal anyway. Like when I miss reading scriptures or we skip FHE, a often pull out the excuse "School and work are so busy, and they are important; I just didn't have time today." Ummm. . . what about those 15 minutes spent watching E! News? Or the half an hour it took to 'organize my binder'? Sometimes you just don't do it right--but that doesn't mean you can't do it better next time.

During our discussion of repentence, we got into the topic of how sometimes people are afraid to repent, they think Heavenly Father is "mad" at them, that He doesn't want them back right now. Well, we have A LOT OF NEW MOMS in our ward and one shared this: 'Whenever I think about people feeling that way about repentence, I think of my daughter. I cannot imagine how I would feel if my daughter ever thought we didn't want her anymore, if she ever thought she couldn't come to us. We will always want her, we will always love her; it would be more painful if she really thought we didn't anymore. . . I think that is the way our Heavenly Father feels about us.' I thought that was an amazing insight, I've never really thought about it that way before . . . .