Draper Utah Temple, late-morning sunbeams after summer clouds—color in the garden, light on the steeple. A small, literal “flood of light.” 🌤️✨🌸
Intro Some days we feel a homesick tug for “another place”—only a mist of memory, but real enough to re-center us. President Joseph F. Smith taught that through obedience we sometimes catch a spark from awakened memories of the immortal soul that lights our whole being. Elder Maxwell adds that most of us arrive in mortality as buds of possibility, meant to open under covenant light—not merely to admire truth, but to apply it.
Final Reflection Think of yourself not only as you are, but as you can become. Our premortal traits still whisper here; environment matters, but eternal identity matters more. Light from the Restoration isn’t for display—it is for development: meekness, patience, mercy. Knowledge informs; obedience transforms. Keep placing today’s light on today’s altar until those buds of possibility unfold.
What I hear now
Receive impressions before the morning mists burn off.
Lead with identity; let environment follow.
Nurture buds with small, exact obedience.
Move truth from admired → applied—light becoming life.
Called to serve.” Elder Mariano’s missionary tag resting on well-used scriptures—belief becoming deeds. 📖
Intro
I’ve been looping Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s “Called to Serve.” Two voices keep converging: King Benjamin’s charge, “If you believe all these things,see that ye do them” (Mosiah 4:10), and Elder Maxwell’s reminder that **deeds, not words—and becoming, not describing—**define discipleship. Mere assent without application is like hearing a lecture but skipping the lab. The audit is personal: Am I taking the field trip with the Savior, or just acing the lecture?
Final Reflection
“One mistake we can make… is to value knowledge apart from the other qualities to be developed in submissive discipleship… Being knowledgeable, by itself… is not enough… It’s like being briefed on a field trip but never taking the field trip.” And then the piercing question: “Are we steadily becoming what gospel doctrines are designed to help us become? Or are we… rich inheritors… but poor investors…?” —Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Called to Serve (BYU, Mar 27, 1994)
Elder Maxwell won’t let truth stop at the ears. Doctrine is meant to develop us—into merciful, meek, patient disciples. King Benjamin removes the wiggle room: if we believe, we do (Mosiah 4:10). Knowledge informs; obedience transforms. The treasure we’ve inherited only yields a return when we invest it in daily, quiet, consecrated doing.
Elder Maxwell says our “defining moments” rarely stand alone; they’re preceded by small, subtle preparatory moments and followed by many smaller moments shaped by them. His Okinawa story (age 18) shows how a single spared moment led to a lifetime pledge—and then came years of quiet confirmations: the Lord’s short, crisp promptings (often “more instructions than explanations”), the urgent nudge to “write the letter now,” and the painter’s metaphor—countless brushstrokes that outsiders may not value, but God is “in the details.” Put beside King Benjamin’s charge, the pattern is clear: belief ripens into decisive, timely doing. Knowledge informs; obedience transforms. Defining moments are built, one obedient brushstroke at a time.
What I hear now
My past can shape me, but it will not script me.
Charity tells the truth and sets kind boundaries.
Don’t just know the gospel—become it.
Belief proves itself by doing (Mosiah 4:10).
Trade admiration for application—put today’s light on today’s altar.
Measure growth by Christlike traits formed, not facts recalled.
Keep taking the “field trips” of faith—show up, serve, endure cheerfully.
