Hello! I figure that, as long as I have this World up, I should keep it at least a little bit active. Now this is hard when there are no questions coming in - and that's perfectly fine, I'm not pushing anyone to submit questions.
But I am starting a new tradition with this World. Welcome, my friend, to the first edition of Sunday Nuggets! Here I will share a small spiritual lesson from the week - be it from my scripture studies or something I learned in church - or it could be just an object-lesson from something that happened in my life over the week... After all, Christ taught in parables.
The first nugget is one of those object-lessons.
I have been a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for almost a year now, and recently have started collecting and customizing the toys that have been released for the show. While at a gathering yesterday with fellow fans, I began to undertake making a custom pony of one of my original fan-characters. I even had a perfect base that wouldn’t require much modification… except for having to add a horn (my character’s a unicorn, the base I'm working with is an earth pony). Not a big deal, I just have to mold a horn from clay.
… Except that to attach the horn, there was a special glue that I thought I could attempt using – but the clay piece had to be baked on while glued to the surface or boiled, for both the piece and the glue to harden.
As I sat there having to boil my base with the horn (though ultimately it was unsuccessful - I'm thinking superglue might be my best bet), I got to thinking about the “furnace of affliction." Like how I was putting this poor plastic pony through what would be torture if this were Toy Story, the Lord subjects us to trials that sometimes we feel to be more than we can bear. But in the end, I knew what I wanted that little plastic pony to be: I wasn’t subjecting it to a boiling pot for sadistic kicks and giggles; but it was a necessary step to fulfill that pony's potential.
Just as I knew what the pony could become if it would endure but a little while, the Lord knows what He wants us to be – and that’s why He allows us to go through trials, that we might become better than we are now. What doesn't kill us will make us stronger, be it physically, emotionally, spiritually, or any combination of the three.
And that's it for the week! Next week's nugget will likely be related to the upcoming General Conference or include something from one of the talks given over that weekend. Until next week!
