Sunday, April 25, 2010

Nothing Fancy

Today I taught primary and I read about this analogy and sort of adapted it to my own and I really liked it. So this is the story I told the children:

My husband's grandma was in town and she loves to go to antique shops. We went to a big antique shop and as we are walking though, I see this chair that is broken dusty. There are gouges in the wood. The seat is broken, stained and dirty. I looked at that chair and thought I could paint that with a bright color and put a new geometric pattern on the seat and maybe even do some vinyl lettering on it. I thought it would look really fancy like that. Then Richard's Grandma looked at the chair and she wanted to sand it and clean it and repair the seat, clean the fabric, stain the wood and RESTORE it to its initial condition.

This is what Joseph Smith did with the Church. He did not take what was existing on the earth and fancy it up, but rather he restored it. He restored it to what it was when Christ was on the earth. He brought back revelation through a mouthpiece of God such as a prophet or Christ. He restored the priesthood authority. He re instituted divinely inspired ordinances such as baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the sacrament and temple ordinances. He made more scriptures and a new testament of Christ available to people for our edification. He restored the true gospel as it was when Christ was on the earth. I am so thankful for that knowledge.

No comments: