Shoes and Sacrifice

In Elder Holland’s recent conference talk about caring for the poor, he told this moving story about President Monson: “I pay a personal tribute to President Thomas Spencer Monson. I have been blessed by an association with this man for 47 years now, and the image of him I will cherish until I die is of him flying home from then–economically devastated East Germany in his house slippers because he had given away not only his second suit and his extra shirts but the very shoes from off his feet” (see here).  I think what is so remarkable about the story is not that President Monson’s gift of his shoes was large in monetary value but that it was a real sacrifice of something that he needed.  Many give large sums of money to charity and to help those in need, but rarely do we give in such a way that it is a significant inconvenience to ourselves.  The Savior was unimpressed by the “rich men casting their gifts into the treasury” who had “of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God,” whereas He praised the widow who gave only a mite but “cast in all the living she had” (Luke 21:1-4).  The Savior is more concerned about the sacrifice we are willing to make than the worldly value of what we might give to help those in need.  Surely any offering we make in righteousness to help others around us is respected of the Lord, but the greatest gifts we can give are those that require a real sacrifice on our own part.  

                The Lord validated this principle when He said of Oliver Granger, “And when he falls he shall rise again, for his sacrifice shall be more sacred unto me than his increase, saith the Lord” (D&C 117:13).  It was the sacrifice that Oliver made that was most important to the Lord, not the actual increase or successes.  We honor the widow of Zaraphath for the same reason.  She only gave one meal to Elijah which in and of itself was very little, but the fact that it was the last food she had to feed her and her boy made the true cost of her sacrifice inestimable.  On the other hand, the Lord rejected the sacrifice of Ananias and Sapphira because they “kept back part of the price” of their offering and only pretended that it was all that they had received (Acts 5:2).  Yesterday I was moved by a very small yet in some ways a significant kind of sacrifice.  My six-year-old daughter and her younger brother were standing at the 4^th of July parade trying to get the candy that was being thrown.  At one point my son had numerous pieces and my daughter had only gotten two.  She was not as quick as him or the other bigger kids around her, and I was trying to encourage her as she started to get a little sad about the so-far unequal distribution.  Another float came by that had candy and this time my daughter successfully grabbed one piece of candy but my son didn’t get any.  He stood there with his lips quivering and tears quickly coming to the surface even though he already had much more than she did.  As she watched him and saw that he was about to have a little breakdown, she quickly thrust the piece of candy at him which he took without hesitation.  It was such a small thing but I was overjoyed to see her willingness to give to someone who had much more than she did so she could make him happy.  It wasn’t the quantity that mattered—it was the fact that I knew the small sacrifice to make her brother feel good was proportionally very large for my little girl.  So perhaps I can understand better our Father in Heaven’s joy at seeing us make sacrifices in our own lives to help those around us—it’s not the “increase” but the forsaking of our own self that counts.