When we go the extra mile to minister, the Lord blesses us with the ability to serve others and live a full life.
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If you’re like me, the new ministering program announced last year has held more confusion than revelation. With such an open-ended directive to serve each other, this great responsibility has brought me only great anxiety. Between time spent with family, at school, and at work, I already struggled making time for the old program, and I couldn’t imagine making time for going above and beyond to minister and serve.
In looking for answers on how to balance my personal life with service, I found Dr. Richard L. Gunn’s speech “Hamburgers and Smorgasbord” given at a BYU graduation. In his address, he tells us that we should make the most of special occasions, and yes we should serve others as well; but rather than cancelling each other out, the service will actually provide more opportunities for the special events in our life. He compares these special occasions to the types of food we eat at those occasions: hamburgers are fine for an everyday meal, but “a special occasion needs sophisticated taste at the table.” When applying this metaphor to your life, Dr. Gunn says that learning to appreciate the significant moments properly will “make the whole future a special occasion.”
He goes on to say that most of the special occasions and great opportunities he’s had in his life came from trying “to employ a little scripture from the Sermon on the Mount that urges us to go the second mile” (see Matthew 5:41). As he went the extra mile to serve those around him, he was continually blessed with more incredible opportunities than he imagined possible. Rather than struggling to fit service around all our plans, Dr. Gunn assures us that when we go the extra mile to minister, the Lord will bless us with all the experiences we could ever want or need for a fulfilling life.
Read more about the opportunities Dr. Gunn was blessed with as he went the extra mile to serve in his full speech: “Hamburgers and Smorgasbord.”
Source: BYU Speeches
—Noelle Conder, Latter-day Saint Insights
FEATURE IMAGE BY EMRE KUZU
Find more insights
Listen to President James E. Faust’s own testimony of going the extra mile in this short video.
Get inspired about the ministering program in the Church’s video “A Vision of Ministering.”
Learn more about the blessings of service from President Henry B. Eyring’s General Conference talk “Inspired Ministering.”