REXBURG — Life is full of struggles, grief and adversity, but it is equally full of joy, growth and learning. That was the message from today’s BYU-Idaho devotional speaker, Tony Carpenter.
Carpenter works at BYU-Idaho as the Creative Services manager. In an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio, he talked about how his talk came together.
“I tried to mirror the same creative process that I use in graphic design,” Carpenter said. “As things just occurred to me, or I heard things in church or at work, I would just try to write them down and keep them in a central location.”
Through this process, Carpenter settled on the words of Russell M. Nelson, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, when he taught, “Mortality is a master class in learning to choose the things of greatest eternal import.”
Carpenter began his talk, “Mortality is a Master Class,” with a story from his childhood when he shot a makeshift arrow through a door in his home. His dad was calm and asked “So, what did you think would happen?” That was a lesson that stuck with Carpenter and has served as a jumping off point for the lessons he continues to learn in mortality.
As he continued his address, Carpenter taught that the first and second great commandments — to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves — are inseparably connected to one another.
“A love of God will result in increased observation of the second great commandment to ‘feed His sheep’ or in other words, to love and serve our spiritual brothers and sisters,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter pointed out that life is replete with ways to help us learn these two important lessons. He listed three: learning through life experience, learning through the scriptures and drawing lessons from the examples of others.
In that same interview with BYU-Idaho Radio, Carpenter said the more we learn from the words of ancient and modern prophets as well as the examples of others, the better off people will be.
“I joke that I like to learn things the hard way,” Carpenter said. “There’s a lot of learning through trial and error. But if that were the only way that we had to learn, what a tough go we'd have, right? So, thankfully, we have the scriptures, and we should be reading those. And then through the example of others as well.”
As part of his remarks, Carpenter shared times in his life when he learned the most, including the untimely death of his brother and the time he spent with his first roommates at what was then Ricks College.
As he concluded his address. Carpenter taught that as people learn from life with gratitude and the help of the Holy Ghost, they will have a more fulfilling sojourn in mortality.
“Even as we have life experiences, observe the examples of others, or read the scriptures, the ultimate source of guidance through it all is the Holy Ghost,” Carpenter said. “We must strive to be worthy to receive the Spriit and make conscientious efforts to cultivate an environment that enables us to be edified by the Spirit’s influence.”
To those who may feel they are “failing” the master class of mortality, Carpenter had these words:
“If I can do it, you can do it,” Carpenter said. “I spent quite a bit of time feeling the same way, but I feel pretty confident that Heavenly Father doesn't feel that way. So, my advice would just be to have faith in him, have faith in the atonement, do what you have to do to try to turn things around. But it's going to be by small and simple things. It's going to be by baby steps. It's not all at once. It's just baby steps, small and simple things. And you just can't give up.”