Teaching Relief Society

I taught R.S. this past week.

I brought in tools to make a rainbow and talked about how no one sees the same rainbow (because a rainbow is created by the angles between the eye, the light source, and the raindrops) even though everyone will see a rainbow in roughly the same area.

I tied that into no one will see/experience God’s love in the same way – but there are general patterns. We also talked about what it means to be a Christian acknowledging that each of us has a unique relationship with God that can’t be the same as another’s. I also included C.S. Lewis’s quote about walking among eternal splendors or everlasting horrors.

We covered the first principle in President Gay’s talk “Taking Upon Us the Name of Christ” on how to work to refine our perceptions to see as God sees. We talked a little bit about how we reflect God’s love like a prism – and that it will look differently based our individuality. We also talked a little bit about what the foundation of our perceptions really is (the physical, mental, and emotional components). Several of the sisters talked about how drastically their perception of reality changed after diagnoses of and beating cancer. I (with humor) redirected the conversation to less extreme examples of dehydration, and seasonal depression. Living in Michigan, everyone gets a touch of seasonal depression around mid-February – so they can relate BUT it is also opening the door for conversations about depression.

Looking at it now, I think that my unique perspective did the lesson justice. I was rattled because we were recovering from the stomach flu (72+ hours past – so good to be in the community), and I had driven our car with the beat up fender area flapping in 40+ gusts of wind. I guess it went over well because I got several compliments (including from a new sister who I am befriending or whom is befriending me – hard to tell). The R.S. President also asked me to teach on the 4th Sunday in March. While I did volunteer to teach in November, it was a mutual decision that I would teach in December, and she asked me to teach in February.