Thanksgiving | LeGrand Richards, Nov 1980

Описание: We ought to cultivate a spirit of thanksgiving for the many blessings we have in the gospel—including the commandments, which are evidence of God's love.

This devotional was given on November 18, 1980.

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I greet each one of you individually and feel proud to think that you would have enough interest to come here to this devotional and listen to the oldest living General Authority of the Church. I have outlived them all by many years.

I enjoyed the opening prayer, the beautiful music of the choir, the introduction given by your wonderful president, and your presence here this morning. What a beautiful day. What a glorious opportunity to be able to meet and worship in the name of the Lord, our God.

I have talked here so many times, I’ve almost run out of subjects. In trying to decide what I might say to you today that would be appropriate, I was reminded that next week we will celebrate Thanksgiving Day all over this great land of freedom and liberty in which we are privileged to live. And I thought of the words of the Lord to the Prophet Joseph contained in the Doctrine and Covenants where the Lord said that “against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things” (D&C 52:21). If we stop to think about it, there isn’t one thing that we have in this world that we are not indebted to the Lord for. He created the earth and placed everything upon it—the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the animals, the trees, the flowers, the fruit, the vegetables, the seeds with power to reproduce themselves. And then he created man and put him upon the earth and gave him dominion over it all. Isn’t that wonderful? And then he enabled man and the animals and those other forms of life to reproduce themselves.

I like the first chapter of John in the New Testament, which reads like this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men . . .

Which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. [John 1:1, 3–4, 9, 14]

After God had created man and everything in the world, he showed his love for the world by sending his Only Begotten Son to atone for the sins of the world and to bring about the resurrection of the dead, and by restoring the everlasting gospel to this earth after centuries of darkness. The gospel gives us a pattern to live by and teaches us where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. If we understand the answers to these three questions, then life really has meaning for us.

We are indebted to the Lord, and I trust that as we approach Thanksgiving Day, we will make it more than a day of recreation and pleasure by reflecting on what we owe the Lord for the blessings that are ours.

While I was president of the mission in Atlanta, Georgia, one of our citizens, a Dr. Fisher, built a beautiful rose garden that covered acres. He opened it to the public without any charge, and there were mottoes hanging on the trees. One of the mottoes was a verse called “A Packet of Seeds”; and I liked it, so I copied it and memorized it. It goes like this:

I paid a dime for a packet of seeds
And the clerk tossed them out with a flip.
“We have them assorted for every man’s needs,”
He said with a smile on his lips.

“Pansies and poppies, asters and peas,
Ten cents a packet, now pick as you please.”
Now seeds are just dimes to the man in the store,
And the dimes are the things that he needs.

And I have been to purchase them in seasons before
And have thought of them merely as seeds.
But as I purchased this package this time it occurred to me,
“You have purchased a miracle here for a dime.

You have a dime’s worth of mystery, destiny, fate.
You’ve a dime’s worth of something no man can create.
In this bright little package, isn’t it odd,
You’ve a dime’s worth of something known only to God.“
You should realize that despite all the scientific knowledge in the world, even after the landing of the astronauts on the moon, the scientists can’t make a seed and put in it the germ of life so that when it’s put in the soil it will grow and have branches and leaves and ...