Hit a cool milestone today

[Fether]

For Christmas, my wife bought me a subscription to BYUs religious educator magazine. I was looking through a recent issue and came across two article titles next to each other.

”was the earth formed from the debris of other planets?”

and

”Feeling God’s Love”

Had I opened up this issue even a year or two ago, I would have gone straight to the article about the earth coming from the debris of other planets. But this morning, it was a no brainer. I had no interest in how the earth was made, but rather I became deeply curious as to how else I could learn to feel God’s love.
 

This has been an aspect of my life I have been seeking to change for a while. For most my life, I was like the Greeks on Mars Hill who wasted their time away looking for new things to hear (Acts 17:21). I’ve slowly progressed over the last year or two, but today I was confronted with two topics on opposite ends of my fight and I didn’t even hesitate which one I wanted to read.

Over the last year, my interest has shifted from learning “new things” to learning how to become a “new creature” in Christ. Instead of stimulating my mind, I’ve sought to stimulate my soul into growing and overcoming the weaknesses I have.

It has been a great year in which I have grown far more than I had in years prior. As you focus your studies on where you can improve, God helps you become whoever you want to be.

[Fether]

From the article:

Sympathy,empathy, and compassion are all Topical Guide synonyms for love. Combined, they define our love for others as the state or condition of having internalized their well-being. … Adam Smith wrote, “Every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people”… divine love, the state or condition in which God has internalized our well-being, is the highest form of love because it is perfect, infinite, enduring, and universal…Sometimes we may not feel God’s love because we are unable or unwilling to pay the price—the price of internalizing the well-being of those around us… Part of that price is to sometimes suffer in place of, sometimes because of, and sometimes vicariously with those we love… to be in relationships with both God and others, we must willingly pay the price of love. As Sister Aileen H. Clyde explained, were we to refuse to pay the price love requires, “we would have to avoid what gives us life and hope and joy—our capacity to love deeply.” We willingly pay the price of love so we may experience joy. Of the Savior, Elder Bruce C. and Marie K. Hafen wrote that the Savior’s “infinite capacity for joy is the inverse, mirror image of the depth of his capacity to bear our burdens.”