Heavenly Father has given us differences from the very beginning to make the world more beautiful, not to divide us.
photo by scott webb
Have you ever felt that someone is so different from you that you have absolutely nothing in common and can’t possibly become friends? We live in a world where social media makes it easy to filter out messages and interact only with people who are just like us. In many ways, we divide ourselves based on our differences.
This division is not the way our Heavenly Father meant for us to be. He created light and dark, big and small, life and death. In “We Don’t Have to Be the Same to Be Together,” a blog posted on lds.org/blog, Irinna Danielson explains the importance of the word “and.” “From the very beginning, the Master Creator has been all about ‘and,’ a small function word we use to connect words or phrases. It denotes inclusiveness and sometimes difference, but always, always connection. It’s what makes and so powerful.”
As we turn to Jesus Christ as our ultimate example, he shows us that we must learn to accept and embrace differences. Christ spent time with those who were very different from him. As Danielson says, “He dined with men regarded as liars, cheats, and sinners. . . .”
Heavenly Father gave us unique and individual features to create beauty and diversity in the earth, not to create dividing lines.
To read more about the divinity of differences, read Irinna Danielson’s “We Don’t Have to Be the Same to Be Together.”
Source: lds.org/blog
—Emily Russon, Mormon Insights
feature image by padrinan
Find more insights
Watch this brief video to learn more about the beauty in our differences.
Read “Loving Others and Living with Differences” by Elder Dallin H. Oaks for more counsel on how to embrace differences.