The Weekly Parable

One year ago this week, I launched The Weekly Parable, just one little voice among the millions on the Internet. For those who have been reading, thanks for being part of this journey!

The Lord made it clear to me early last April that this is how He wanted me to share the gospel and preach of Christ online. It took some time to settle on a title for the site. The only thing I could think of was “The Weekly Parable.” That scared me a little because if I called it that, I was making an open-ended commitment to myself and to the Lord, and I knew that could introduce some pressure or stress, and I didn’t want something like this to become a chore. But because I couldn’t think of anything else, even when I prayed about the subject, then “The Weekly Parable” it would be.

I would go so far as to say it took some faith. Exercising faith can be difficult because you don’t know what’s going to be ahead if you move forward.

A year later, The Weekly Parable is still here, and a week has not gone by without a parable of some sort. I give the credit to Heavenly Father. Many of the ideas for the parables—if not all—have really been His, and He has condescended to plant them in my mind. There have been times that all I had was a list of concepts and some drafts or fragments that didn’t seem right or weren’t working out. And after thought and prayer, God answered and filled in the vacuum for me for a given week.

I also have to thank David Armstrong, who has sometimes given me the ability to spend some extra time on some parables by providing a few of his own along the way. His profile can be found on the Contributors page.

To celebrate this milestone, and as this week’s parable, here’s a link to the first parable I published: “The Fortune”

Looking at the gospel of Jesus Christ through a lens of how it can be described in parables, and then writing about the interpretation of the parables, has led to insights and connections I may not have otherwise arrived at. I have spent more of my time pondering truths of the gospel than I most likely would have without having this website. A few weeks ago, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught, “To the Lord, the value of the donation [is] measured not by the effect it [has] on the treasury but by the effect it [has] on the heart of the donor” (“Our Heartfelt All”). This seems a fitting description of this exercise because I have been uplifted by pondering and writing about Christ and His gospel, and I feel like I’ve come closer to Him over the last year.

I’m probably the biggest beneficiary of this website so far, and perhaps that was Heavenly Father’s intent to begin with. But if you have found value in it and continue to follow along, I’m grateful. Here’s to another year!

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^{Photo by David Bartus on Pexels.com}

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