Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a story about obedience that a lady in my ward shared years ago. I was a student at BYU, so it’s probably been at least 18 years ago. I don’t remember the lady’s name or even for sure what ward I was in at the time. The details of when she shared the story are a bit fuzzy. Was it as part of a sacrament talk? Did she share it as part of her testimony? Did she share it during a lesson? Honestly, I don’t remember. What I do remember, though, is the story itself. It’s stuck with me now for nearly two decades.
The Story
The lady talked about how the sister missionaries in her mission really liked to wear bracelets. She made it sound like while it was popular for the sister missionaries to wear bracelets, it wasn’t something that they felt like was negatively impacting their missionary work. I’m guessing that the mission president felt differently about it since he told the sister missionaries that they needed to stop wearing bracelets at all.
Some of the sister missionaries obeyed right away, taking off their bracelets and not wearing them again for the rest of their missions. Others weren’t as obedient. Some continued to wear bracelets, feeling like they shouldn’t have to stop. Others cut back on how often they wore bracelets or how many they wore, but they didn’t stop wearing them altogether. They might make excuses, such as, “I’m just wearing one,” or “I’m only wearing it once a week.”
She explained that this same level of obedience carried over into other parts of their mission. Those who made excuses for continuing to wear the bracelets also bent the rules a bit in other areas. Those who obeyed the mission president concerning the bracelets were also obedient in other ways. Then she said, “Sometimes it’s not about the bracelets.”
What We Can Get Out of It
That phrase has really stuck with me. Even now, I find myself thinking about it occasionally. Sometimes in life, we are going to be asked by our leaders to do things or not to do things. The directive may come from the prophet himself or from another general authority. It might be something your stake president or bishop tells you to do. Your Elders Quorum president or Relief Society president may ask you to do something. The thing that you don’t want to do or that you want to continue doing may even come as a prompting from the Spirit. It might feel like it’s absurd or like it doesn’t make any sense.
You may even feel like you don’t need to be obedient. You may begin to think that it doesn’t apply to you. It might be hard or inconvenient. You may even feel like you know better than the person telling you what you should or should not do. You may feel that it won’t hurt you to not be fully obedient. It’s easy to fight against something that you’re told to do when you don’t understand the “why,” especially when you’re comfortable where you are now.
Were the bracelets themselves hurting these sister missionaries? No. Was wearing a bracelet (or multiple bracelets) going to keep them from entering the Celestial Kingdom? No. In a different situation would those same bracelets have been 100% appropriate? Yes.
The Takeaway
Ultimately, sometimes it’s not about the bracelets. It’s really about obedience. It’s about our faith to move forward when things don’t make sense or when we don’t understand the “why” of the situation. Will we be obedient in the small, simple things? If not, it’s going to be a lot harder to be obedient in the bigger things.
No, I am not encouraging blind obedience. Every single one of us needs to pray to know if what our leaders are telling us to do comes from Heavenly Father. We need to pray to know that a leader is leading in the right way. Once we get that answer, though, we need to obey, even if it really doesn’t make sense or if we feel like what we were doing wasn’t hurting anyone. Sometimes, this might mean letting go of pride so we can express our desire to be obedient.
I’d love to know other people’s “it’s not about the [fill in the blank with your own thing]” stories. What are your stories of obedience where you later realized it wasn’t about doing (or not doing) something as much as it was simply about showing your willingness to be obedient?
