“This is how I want to live.” ~By Anthony Garrett, from ’50 Things that Really Matter to Latter-day Saints’
From the Book “Fifty Things that Really Matter to Latter-Day Saints”, Anthony Garret shared:
As on a normal day as missionaries in Polvdiv, Bulgaria, my companion and I sat in one of the classrooms of an otherwise vacant church building in the city of Polvdiv talking to a particularly spiritually sensitive college student, Yanko. I had known Yanko from the time a friend had introduced him to us a few months prior, and he and I had become fast friends. If he raised a gospel question, it was never with cynicism but rather with acute earnestness.
Knowing the Yanko earned hourly only two Bulgarian lev (a little more than one American dollar, I was hesitant to teach the thoughts we had prepared on the subject of tithing.
We read the promises made by Malchi to those who would pay their tithes: “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you out a blessing, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough for you to receive it” (Malachi 3:10).
“Why is it worded that way?” Yanko interrupted. The doubt in his voice was clear, however sincere.
Further bracing myself, I asked him what it meant. He repeated the question and then said, “If I knew there wasn’t a heaven, I would still keep the commandments. And if someone were to ask me why, my answer would be that this is how I live. This is my heaven.”
I slowly realized that this was not about the doctrine but about motivation. He was so willing to pay tithing that he would have done so without the promise of future reward. He knew the Lord would take care of him now.
I had not anticipated that a lesson on tithing would teach me one of the secrets to happiness in this life. I find I often tell myself the next step, the next phase, the next event in life will set things precisely in order to make me forever content. But right now can be my heaven. This is how I want to live.
By Anthony Garrett, 50 Things that Really Matter to Latter-day Saints (Leatherwood Press, available through Deseret Book Distributors, 40 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111, (801)534-1515) Copyright © 2007 by Leatherwood Press LLC) p.142
