Svithing because I can

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Did you read Uncle Orson's column in Mormon Times last week? I'm going to quote shamelessly.

. . . as I came to church last Sunday, I . . . [found] three scraps of torn paper, each about an inch square, lying near the main couch.

The fact that there were only three scraps suggested that some adult had frantically picked up all the other scraps but missed a few. I instantly pictured some mom, loaded down with a paper-tearing toddler, a baby in a carrier and a huge diaper, toy and snack bag, dragging her burdens away from the couch, only to notice the scraps she had missed and think, I just can't set anything down to clean those up. Somebody else will have to do it.

That somebody else was me.

How did I know it was my job? Because the scraps were . . . there, and I saw them.

I bent over. I picked them up. I walked 10 steps to the garbage can tucked up under the never-used coat rack, deposited the scraps and then walked into the chapel just in time to help the usher open the folding curtain to the pass through and help set up chairs because somebody had decided not to put any back in the overflow after the youth dance in the cultural hall the night before. . . .

My calling in our ward is not "foyer trash police" or "guy who interrupts the other ward's gospel doctrine class in order to get chairs out from under the stage in the cultural hall," but I did those jobs this past Sunday.

Because they needed doing. Nobody cared that I did them. The only reason I remember is because I knew I was going to write this essay.

We sometimes think that our callings consist of the slot that we've been assigned to fill -- the job that gives us our ward identity.

But that's not so. Our calling is to do whatever needs doing that we have the authority to do. . . .

Do you want to see the Kingdom of God on earth? It's there in our chapels and classrooms and foyers, and it consists of ... us. Friends and fellow-servants in his house.

Here's to picking up the scraps of paper we see.

Here's to holding the door for the person behind us.

Here's to grabbing left-behind bulletins as we walk out of the chapel.

Here's to doing out part.

last week's svithe