Christmas!

Sigh... I love this time of year!! I love seeing all of the Christmas lights around town and hearing all of the Christmas music in the stores and in the car. However, thing I love the most about this time of year is that for a couple weeks out of the year people are really striving to look outside themselves and serve others. It seems like people are striving more to understand Christ and be more like Him, and that really is what Christmas is all about.
I love reading the Bible story of Jesus Christ's birth in Bethlehem. His mother, Mary, and her soon-to-be husband Joseph were on their way to pay their tax. Mary was great with child and "because there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke 2:7) she had baby Jesus in a stable, and laid him in a manager. At the birth of the Savior, shepherds, came from their fields to worship the Him. These shepherds had been steadfastly watching over their flocks when an angel of the Lord appeared to them and gave them "good tidings of great joy" (Luke 2:10). This angel told them that that day, a babe had been born in the city of David. Or more specifically, a Savior had been born into the world. After the shepherds heard the heavenly host singing praises to God they went searching after this baby.
There also came three wise men from the east, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I'm grateful for their gifts, but my mind causes me to reflect on the gift that the shepherds gave. They didn't bring any material items to give to the baby, but they had brought their humble hearts. They sacrificed to find the Savior, and worship Him in the way that they could. Today, we are like those shepherds. We cannot give the Savior physical gifts like the wise men did but we can give Him our hearts, and our lives. We can still give Him a gift. We can choose to serve Him. We can search after Him. I know that when we search that we don't have to look far, He is always close by us. I love the Savior. I'm so grateful that He came to this world and gave His life so we could all return again with Him someday.
Christmas time really is the time of joy.

Obedience

There is no substitute for obedience. It is the first law of heaven. When I look back at my life, and my mission experience, the happiest times that I have had were those times when I did exactly what I knew I was suppose to do. I have always been happiest when I have followed the rules instead of ignoring them. Or when I pretended they didn't exist.
From modern revelation we learn that "When we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated" (Doctrine and Covenants 120:21, pg. 265). All of our blessings can be tied back to some law or commandment that we have decided to be obedient to. Sometimes it may seem like commandments restrict our freedom, but I know that living commandments it what really makes us free.
 Take a funnel for instance:

   Say you needed to get one piece of rice through a funnel.  So, you hold the funnel right-side up and put the grain of rice in the top. There are a lot of different ways you can get the rice into the funnel. It can go in on the right side, on the left side, down the middle, etc... But as the grain of rice goes down the funnel there is only one way that it can escape. There is only one little tiny tiny hole at the bottom. However, if you hold the funnel upside-down, there is only one hole for the rice to go in, but there are so many different ways that the grain of rice can come out! It can escape on the right side, the left side, down the middle, etc... This is how commandments can be viewed. If we disregard commandments it may seem freeing in the beginning. There seem to be so many different ways to go. But what about in the end? How many options do we have to escape? When we obey the commandments- even though it may seem restricting in the beginning- we have so much more freedom in the end.
  I know God loves us enough to give us commandments. I know we are given commandments for a reason, even if we don 't completely understand why. I know that when we are obedient to those commandments peace and joy will begin to fill our lives.