The Weekly Parable

Our Heavenly Father is the Creator and Overseer of the universe, so you could say He has everything. But what are His true riches?

We are.

Often, we measure our own worth by the total assets in our bank accounts. Of course, the bigger the number, the better!

However, like the wealthy man in the Parable of the Fortune who considered the importance of each penny in his vault, our Father won’t measure His own success by how large the group is who obtains His kingdom. He will not be saying, “Will you look at the size of this crowd!” He won’t be watching some cosmic scoreboard or looking upon us as a collection. Rather, He will measure His success, and you could say His wealth, by the arrival and the crowning of each one of His children who has chosen Him and His Son and lived accordingly. He will celebrate each “penny.”

We will reciprocate His joy. Some of the writings of ancient prophets suggest that those who are admitted to God’s kingdom will forever praise Him (for example, in the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 10:25 and Alma 29:17). I don’t take this to mean that we will spend all of our time kneeling before His throne and averting our eyes with arms outstretched in what has become almost a stereotype of what it means to worship. Rather, I see these eternal devotions as a frequent and ongoing acknowledgement by those who have become “joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17) of their constant gratitude to Him, “for he doth work righteousness forever” (Alma 26:8) and “his mercy endureth forever” (Psalms 106:1). So this never-ending praise will be a natural outgrowth of how we feel about Him, not an externally imposed requirement to meet some divine need for adulation.

For our Heavenly Father, each of us has worth to Him as an individual child who has glorious potential and not merely as a part of a whole. Said the Lord, “I will make [each one] more precious than fine gold; even [each one] than the golden wedge of Ophir” (Isaiah 13:12). He has an amazing, infinite capacity to work in each of our lives to bring this about.

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