Monday, January 20, 2014

          Glade went to the health club to swim and bike while I walked up and down the hill.  We opted out of going for groceries and spent most of the day reading, studying, and cleaning.    

I read the following excerpt from a book by Mary Ellen Edmonds written years ago, but still containing pertinent principles.  She is a nurse, has taught at BYU and the MTC, has been on the speaking circuit for Church events, etc. etc.  She is full of humor and I loved her thoughts on magnifying our talents... 

          “Sure, I took piano lessons.  Didn’t everyone?  I hated practicing; I wanted just to play.  But Mrs. Jones was quite insistent about all the scales and arpeggios, and my parents backed her up—she was, after all, one of the best piano teachers in town.  So I practiced, but not often with great, swelling feelings of joy.

            “I always thought that magnifying talents meant you practiced and practiced until you got really good at something—so good you could show off.  If you magnified your piano talent, you would soon play so well that people would be jealous of you, and your mother could leave the door open when you practiced—not the door of the living room where the piano was, but the front door.  Then everyone in the neighborhood would be able to hear, and they’d be amazed and thrilled.  Probably they’d comer and crowd onto the front lawn just to listen to your practicing because you were so good.

            “Mom and Dad never were able to leave the front door open when I practiced.  Alan Seegmiller’s parents could and did, and I remember hearing him play and wondering how in the world he could make his fingers do all that stuff.  My parents weren’t able to leave the front door open until my brother Richard came along.  He was the last of the eight of us, and for some reason it “took” for him.  He was playing Big Stuff—the fourteen-page, hubba-hubba things—and playing it well.  I used to ask him to play for my friends whenever they came over.  He could play without even looking at the book.  And Mom left the front door open.

            “Anyway, I thought magnifying talents was a very focused on-yourself kind of thing.  You got better and better and people began to notice and they asked you to play at funerals and weddings and the openings of new stores.  You would accompany people who sang or played the violin, but you could also do solo numbers.  Maybe you’d even get to a point where you’d charge someone two dollars to have you come and play for an event.          

“Sometimes I imagined myself as a person who had magnified her talents and was now approaching The Judgment Bar, having passed away in the prime of life.  At some check-in point I am asked if I have magnified my talents.  ‘Of course!’ I reply.  ‘Surely you’ve heard of me.’  Then they ask if I would like to show them.  Certainly.  This is no big deal.  I’ve been showing off my whole life.  They roll out the golden heavenly grand piano.  I ask all the angels or whoever is there to please be quiet and respectful.  And away I go.  A concert for the ages.  I bring everyone to tears!  They welcome me in with great enthusiasm.

“I have since learned that magnifying talents means something quite different.  It is illustrated by a woman I met once who had taught more than two hundred piano students.  Maybe that’s not a record, but it’s extremely impressive and in itself should assure her sainthood.  Now, think of her at come check-in point in a few years.  ‘Did you magnify your talents?’ they ask, and she replies in a genuine, humble way, ‘I really worked at it.’  Would you like to show us?’  ‘You mean here and now?’  ‘Yes, please.’  ‘All right.’  So they roll out two hundred golden heavenly grand pianos, and all those whom she has taught and helped are playing, and she’s just sitting on a lawn chair eating grapes.

“Part of magnifying talents is giving them away, investing in others and allowing them to be successful.  It includes not being threatened by the fact that eventually someone you have taught will play the piano or do something else better than you can.   

“The Doctrine and Covenants teaches this wonderful truth about magnifying talents: . . . ‘that every man may improve upon his talent, that every man may gain other talents, yea, even an hundred fold, to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, to become the common property of the whole church—every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God’  (D&C 82:17-19) . . .

“The idea of magnifying talents takes me back to my childhood, when I would sit on the back porch with my little plastic magnifying glass.  I could see things through that glass that I couldn’t see with my naked eye.  I loved looking at my hands and dirt and leaves and grasshoppers—anything that would hold still long enough—and seeing them in a different way than usual.  That makes me wonder:  Can God see in us things we can’t see with our naked, natural eye?  When He speaks of magnifying us, is part of that His ability to find talents in us that we don’t know we have?  Does He give us experiences that help us increase and magnify our talents so that we have more to share?

“Many of our most important talents, which we seek to magnify in order to be of greater service, have nothing to do with pianos and violins and needles (those that sew or those that deliver medicine, depending on the need).   The hymn ‘More Holiness Give Me’ lists some of those greater talents, things like humility and empathy, meekness and patience, trust and joy, praise and purpose. . .”

It is in your hands to make your own analogies and personal applications, but know that you each have talents and gifts from God especially for you and especially for you to magnify and share!   Much Love!!!  J