How to Accept and be grateful for the many gifts God has given (Sacrament Talk May 25, 2025)

•  

  I had a friend who wrote about how when she was four years old, it seemed forever until her next birthday or Christmas.  After all, a year in the life of a four year old is a fourth of their life.

   

  It seemed to her that as she got older, the time until Christmas or a birthday became shorter.  After all, when she was 80, a year was only 1/80^th of her life.  When compared to the time, when she was a young child it was like Christmas and Birthdays were coming twice a month.

   

  That got me to thinking about how a year will be in the hereafter, when we have even more time.  For example in 800 years, one year is 1/800 of the time we have had.  That is 1/800 or 200 times shorter than one year in the life of a child.  In 8,000 years it is 2,000 times shorter than it was in the life of that young child..

   

  100 years to someone who is 8,000 years old is like the time to next Christmas to someone who is 80.

   

  That gave me some perspective. When the scriptures talk about the eternities, that is a very long time, and it makes each year even shorter in comparison.

   

  I took my wife to France for our twentieth wedding anniversary. 

   

  As a part of the trip we went to Versailles.  There we saw the palace of France’s most well known king whose nickname was “the Sun King” and we saw his famous hall of mirrors, famous because of how expensive and rare mirrors were then. 

   

  I realized a couple things.  First, if I tried to put mirrors like that in my house, instead of it being considered extravagantly, it would just be tacky.  Second, my house, with air conditioning and central heating and modern plumbing and my comfortable bed was more comfortable to live in and gave me a better standard of living than the Sun King had.

   

  Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King, ruled France from 1643 to 1715. He had the highest standard of living in the world in that era.  

   

  By the time I visited his palace, just about three hundred years later, his standard went from the most extravagant and highest standard of life in the world to sub-par an ordinary life in the suburbs. 

   

  It made me think that if heaven were only four hundred years ahead of where we are now in terms of technology and understanding, then it is probably unimaginably better than our lives are, the same way that my life now, with the food I eat and air conditioning, is that much better than Louis XIV’s life was about three hundred years ago.

   

  Then years ago, I was on  listening to the radio and a story came on about an anthropologist working in the jungle.  He wore a lot of mud to keep the biting insects off and he ate a lot of grubs.  He also had a native guide and the two of them were visiting a tribe deeper in the jungle when they had a feast day.

   

  In the middle of the feast, he realized it was Thanksgiving, and there he was covered in mud and eating grubs.  His guide noticed the anthropologist’s expression, and nudged him.

   

  “I know how you feel.  Back home in my village our grubs taste so much better too.”

   

  I realized that in comparison to what things were like in the pre-existence and as they will be, we are like that poor guy covered in mud and eating grubs.

   

  There are several realizations there.

   

  One, how short life is.

   

  Two, how much better life could be.

   

  Three, how even the best experiences we can have from an eternal perspective are not that far from being covered in mud and eating grubs.

   

  It becomes tempting to use that to downplay suffering, pain and the difficulties of human existence.  Which I think is a terrible mistake.  It is also the reason God has given us the gift of forgetting our premortal existence.

   

  That allows us to not treat life like a temporary thing that does not have real meaning.

   

  Instead, we are living life in the here and now, time is real to us, and our hardships and blessings are real.  The gifts we give and receive are real.

   

  Gift giving is a part of all cultures and civilizations.  People always share gifts.  With gifts we strengthen friendships, express love, share gratitude and mark important events.  Weddings, birthdays, and holidays, like Christmas, are marked by gifts.

   

  Humans are not the only creatures to give gifts.  Penguins give rocks to prospective mates as a part of courting.  Ravens and crows give gifts to each other and have even been observed to give gifts to humans they favor.  Many of the various types of apes give fruit, or grubs, to expand and create friendships. 

   

  In reflecting on this, it helps to reflect on gifts we have given.  Think of the times you have found the perfect gift for someone.  The times you found a gift for your mother.  Gifts given to friends, children and teachers.  Gifts you have given to other family members.

   

  Think about how you felt when you found the gift you intended to give.  Think about how you felt when you anticipated their getting the gift or about how you felt when someone gave you the perfect gift.

   

  I’m sure everyone in the audience has had gifts that they have received and treasured.

   

  God gives us gifts too, which is the topic of the talk I was assigned to give.

   

  Thinking about gifts helps us to understand the three parts of gift giving and receiving as laid out by Elder Patrick Kearon.

   

  First, there is the giving of a gift, where someone selects, prepares or creates a gift and gives it to the person they want to have the gift.  There is intent to give a gift.

   

  Second, accepting and recognizing the gift where the person receiving the gift accepts the gift and recognizes that it is a gift.

   

  Third, receiving the gift.  That is more than just unwrapping a gift or recognizing that someone has given you a gift.  It is understanding that you have received something of value and completing the circle by expressing gratitude.

   

  In many ways, to receive a gift is the intentional part of the process, beyond merely having a gift in your possession.  Reception is the word used for when a gift strengthens the bonds between the giver and the receiver.  It is when the gift cycle moves from acceptance to connection.

   

  This step becomes important as we consider gifts from God.

   

  There is much in our lives that consists of gifts from our Heavenly Father to us.

   

  This begins with being able to be in this life and to experience it as real and meaningful.

   

  When you trip and fall, your trip, your fall, and your pain are all real and meaningful.  When you have loss or pain or care or suffering, it is real, it has meaning.  It is not that the pain you have is transitory and won’t matter in a thousand years, because you do not remember a thousand years, that is not  your current state.  You remember this life and what you have lived.

   

  So the first gift we have from God is  that what we experience is real and it is meaningful in the lives we remember and the lives that we have.

   

  The next or second gift is that just as our lives are real and meaningful, so are the lives of those we meet and those we know in this life.

   

  When I give a gift or do something, while from an eternal perspective my gift may be the same as a feast of grubs, in the present time and perspective my gift is meaningful.  When I buy my grandchild a swim suit, from an eternal perspective it might not be much better than a coat of mud given to an anthropologist. 

   

  But in the present, to my grandchild, it means something, it is real to them.

   

  The third gift we have is that the good things we have in life that we take pleasure in, those things are real to us and we can appreciate them and be grateful.

   

  I can be grateful for my clothes.  I can be grateful for my home.

   

  When I was younger and my dad gave me a Chevy Vega, I could be grateful for it.  When I had a chance to watch television on a black and white TV that was 10” across, I could be grateful and I could enjoy it.

   

  Each of us can take joy and be happy in the moment.

   

  We can give and receive gifts, and we can take this life as a gift and see it as a joyful thing in the present.

   

  We can also accept and experience the losses and pains we have in the present as real and we can have compassion for the real losses and pains others feel.

   

  With a perspective that comes from not remembering thousand of years in the past, we can be in the present and be there for each other, with real kindness and empathy. We can focus on the here and now.  When we focus on this life—instead of the hereafter—we are present for ourselves and we are present for others.

   

  We are involved.

   

  Beyond the present, we can also expand our understanding of the gifts God has for us as our parent and in giving us Christ.

   

  First, that means we can accept that we are really God’s children and the truth that God loves us.

   

  Second, we can accept and receive that, to pull from scripture “In the gift of his Son hath God prepared [for us] a more excellent way” .

   

  That is important because without this perspective, knowledge can make us miserable.  That is because so much in life is painful, filled with loss and unfair.

   

  Paul said that without the gift of Christ we would be of all mankind the most unhappy and the most miserable.

   

  This is because the gospel lets us know both what can be and what should be.  It highlights what is wrong and what is unfair.  The pain and the loss that comes to the world, the same pain and loss we experience and that we are taught to have compassion for in others.

   

  Without Christ, we have only the unfairness, pain and loss.

   

  But with Christ we have the gift of the son of God, his love, his forgiveness and his healing. 

   

  It is also the knowledge that it is a gift.

   

  We need not be “deserving” of that gift.  We do not need to deserve love or to be a child of God.  The truth is that none of us receives that gift because we are deserving.  Instead we receive it through Christ freely as a gift.

   

  That is important.

   

  We did not have to be deserving to have the gift of forgetting so that we could appreciate the world we are in.

   

  We did not have to earn the gift of our lives being meaningful and real.  We only have to realize and accept that our lives are meaningful and real.

   

  We did not have to earn the gift of being able to take joy in the lives we have.  We only have to realize and accept the joy in the lives that we have.

   

  We do not need to be deserving to be children of our heavenly father or to have hope in Christ.

   

  Instead, we need to accept and recognize that we are children of our Heavenly father and that Christ came to give us hope.

   

  We then complete that cycle by being grateful for the love of God and Christ and giving place for it in our hearts.

   

  So God has given us many gifts. He deserves a thank  you note.

   

  We can recognize the gifts God has given us.  We can recognize the gift of a real and meaningful life.  We can recognize the joys we find in life.  We can recognize that we are children of our heavenly Father and finally, we can recognize that Christ was given to us to bless and heal us.

   

  Then we complete the cycle by understanding that we have received gifts that have value and we complete the circle by expressing gratitude to God.

   

  That allows us to constantly accept and be grateful for the many gifts God has given.

   

  In the name of God’s greatest gift, Jesus Christ, Amen.