Guest Post: Quick To Observe
Guest Post by Moss. Moss is a mom who lives in the desert and loves cooking, memes, reading, and faith.
Sister Bednar and I are acquainted with a returned missionary who had dated a special young man for a period of time. She cared for him very much, and she was desirous of making her relationship with him more serious. She was considering and hoping for engagement and marriage. This relationship was developing during the time that President Nelson counseled the all members of the Church to get vaccinated for Covid-19 and wear masks when social distancing isn’t possible.
The young woman waited patiently over a period of time for the young man to get vaccinated or wear a mask but he did not. Instead of listening to our Prophet, he listened to anti-science strangers on YouTube. This was a valuable piece of information for this young woman, and she felt unsettled about his nonresponsiveness to a prophet’s pleading, to say nothing of the pleading of the medical community. For this and other reasons, she ultimately stopped dating the young man, because she was looking for an eternal companion who had the courage to promptly and quietly obey the counsel of the prophet in all things and at all times, and one who was willing to put the safety of others above his own comfort. The young woman was quick to observe that the young man was not quick to observe.
I presume that some of you might have difficulty with my last example. You may believe the young woman was too judgmental or that basing an eternally important decision, even in part, upon such a supposedly minor issue as how someone responds to a major community health crisis is silly or fanatical. Perhaps you are bothered because the example focuses upon a young man who failed to respond to prophetic counsel instead of upon a young woman. I simply invite you to consider and ponder the power of being quick to observe and what was actually observed in the case I just described. The issue was not earrings!
This guest post is a play on Bednar’s 2005 BYU Devotional address, Quick To Observe.
