Perspective is Everything

Just got the following in my email, and I wanted to share it with you.

I read this morning in a book of the talks from the 2009 Women's
Conference a talk by Brad Wilcox entitled "Changing Weaknesses Into
Strengths." (It was fabulous!) Maybe it won't make as much impact
without reading the entire thing, but as I read it, it resonated with
me, and I wanted to share it with out music mothers who would really
get it!

(Bro. Wilcox is speaking of the atonement and the scripture 2 Nephi
25:23, "For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all
we can do." )

"Christ's arrangement with us is similar to a mother providing music
lessons for her child. Mom, who pays the piano teacher, can require
her child to practice. By so doing she is not attempting to recover
the costs of the lessons, but to help the child take full advantage of
this opportunity to live on a higher level. Her joy is not found in
getting her investment back, but in seeing it used. If the child in his
immaturity sees Mom's expectation to practice as unnecessary or
overly burdensome, it is because he doesn't yet share her perspective.
When Christ's expectations feel the same to us, perhaps it is because,
as C.S. Lewis put it, "we have not yet had the slightest notion of the
tremendous thing He means to make of us." We are helped in this
line-upon-line discovery when we focus less on what Jesus asks and
more on why He asks it."