AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?

There are four requirements suggested by the Church to ensure temporal self-reliance of the saints:

1.  Gain an adequate education and stay abreast of your field.
2.  Live within your income and consistently save for a rainy day.
3.  Avoid excessive debt.
4.  Acquire and store a year's worth of necessities.

Being temporally self-reliant seems to go hand in hand with being accountable for the stewardships with which we have been entrusted.  In D&C 104:13 we read:

"13. For it is expedient that I, the Lord, should make every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures."

If we are not engaged in provident living, we are not being good stewards indeed.  I have battled with this concept for many years having lived on the poverty line as a single mother.  There never seemed to be enough of my resources to ensure self-reliance should I one day be facing a bleak future.  We live and learn from consequences we suffer and I am one of the pupils.

It is interesting to me that straight behind this concept of temporal self-reliance comes an admonition from the Lord to be our brother's keeper.  Consider what the Lord says following the abovementioned scripture:

"14. I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine.
15.  And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine.
16.  But it must needs be done in mine own way; and behold this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low.
17.  For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.
18.  Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and import not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment."  D&C 104:14-18

I am certain that we shall be judged the most on how we have cared for each other whilst on this mortal journey.  All that we possess in this life is not ours at all, it all belongs to God who gave it to us in the first place, as per the scripture above.  Therefore, each time we stretch out our hands to give, we are not giving away what is ours but what we have been provided with by God for our care and for the care of others.  We are merely being good stewards and instruments in God's hands of blessing others.  I have already mentioned this in another blog and will do so again here.  We are not meant to judge one another as we do not understand each others' capacities and burdens. We are not to think that someone has brought upon themselves their own calamities and now should suffer the consequences.  King Benjamin spoke of this in Mosiah 4, calling us all beggars before God.  I believe we are here to learn two things, without which we can never become like the Saviour and therefore cannot have eternal life, and that is love and service.  When we arrive at the point where we love and care for others as much as we do for ourselves, we have achieved our purpose and can go home assured we have accomplished what we have been sent here to do.  We will then be able to live in God's kingdom with each other sharing freely the inheritance of the Firstborn he so freely desires to share.  In the words of Victor Hugo: "To love another person is to see the face of God".

I want to share with you an instance from my own life where I was helped in a very small way but which was a great help to me at the time.  I was a newly divorced single mother battling to make ends meet.  With a few more days to pay day, I realised that the fuel in my car would not last.  I knelt down and prayed this one particular morning asking the Lord for $20 for fuel.  I then went to work and didn't really think about it much until lunch time when my co-worker came to my desk and put $20 on it.  I asked what the money was for and he said he was coming back from lunch when he noticed $20 on the footpath.  He said he picked up the note and wondered what to do with it. He decided he didn't need it and as he did so I immediately came into his mind and he resolved to give the money to me.  As President Spencer W. Kimball put it so aptly: "God does notice us and he watches over us but it is usually through another person that he meets our needs".