On Tuesday, July 28, Brother Willy Twitchell, an Animal and Food Science Faculty Member at BYU-Idaho, spoke at the first BYU-Idaho Devotional of the Summer Session.
His talk is entitled, “Check Your Heart,” where he talks about the importance of softening our hearts, always, and during these troubled times.
“Brothers and Sisters, we can have a soft heart and allow peace to fill our souls, if we want...regardless of our personal struggles, our relationships and the crazy world around us,” Twitchell said in devotional. “Again, I invite you to be quick in identifying when we have planted the seed of a hard heart, and change.”
Twitchell shared many ideas in his talk and expounded on those ideas more in an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio.
He said that one of the best things people can do to ‘check their hearts’ is to read the scriptures.
“Grounding myself in scripture is usually my go-to,” Twitchell said. “I usually feel the influence of The Savior a lot [more] if I’m reading my scriptures.”
Twitchell said that people need to understand and recognize when a change needs to happen within ourselves. He encouraged people to recognize the changes they need to make and then to make them.
One of the most toxic battlegrounds of our day can be social media, and Twitchell said that it’s essential to listen to other people’s perspectives, especially on things we disagree on.
Without listening, the conversation will probably go in a direction that won’t be very beneficial to anyone, he said.
Twitchell encouraged everyone at the end of his talk to soften their hearts and to recognize when a change needs to be made.