On Conference

As I wind down for the day and prepare for a busy week of dissertating, I thought I'd share two thoughts on a story the Elder Uchtdorf told in the Sunday morning session of General Conference today. The story is about two Jewish brothers, and I'm pretty sure I've heard it before in some form or other. It's a good one. Here it is, in case you missed it. Or accidentally slept through it.

"A Jewish legend tells of two brothers Abram and Zimri who owned a field and worked it together. They agreed to divide both the labor and the harvest equally. One night as the harvest came to a close, Zimri could not sleep, for it didn’t seem right that Abram who had a wife and 7 sons to feed should receive only half of the harvest while he, who had only himself to feed, should receive so much. So Zimri dressed and quietly went into the field where he took a third of his harvest and put it in his brother’s pile. He then turned to his bed, satisfied that he had done the right thing.

"Meanwhile, Abram could not sleep either. He thought of his poor brother Zimri who was all alone and had no sons to help him with his work. It did not seem right that Zimri who worked so hard by himself should get only half of the harvest. Surely this was not pleasing to God and so Abram quietly went to the fields where he took a third of his harvest and placed it in the pile of his beloved brother.

"The next morning the brothers went to the field and were both astonished that the piles looked to be the same size. That night both brothers slipped out of their houses to repeat their efforts of the previous night. But this time they discovered each other. And when they did, they wept and embraced."

The first thought that came to mind was that I want to be more like this. On one level, it's just another story about recognizing and appreciating what you have. Zimri could have envied Abram's family, and Abram could have envied Zimri's relative wealth and freedom, but instead they both saw in their respective positions a blessing. It's really easy to feel as though the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and to experience discontent with what we have. But when we do that, it not only hurts ourselves, it hurts our relationships with other people. We've heard the lesson over and over: Recognize the blessings in your own life, and be genuinely happy for the blessings that other people experience.

But that's not actually what the story is about. It goes a step beyond. It wasn't just that Abram and Zimri recognized their own blessings, it was that each brother's recognition of how he in particular had been blessed helped him to better love the other. And I don't mean the feeling called love, I mean the action called love. If I am truly grateful to the Lord for what I have, it ought to make me a better friend, daughter, sister, neighbor. The story was an interesting way for me to connect those two pieces, and made me want to think more about the implications in my own life.

Reflection #2
My second thought was, "Wait - if Zimri gave a third of his share to Abram, and then Abram gave a third of his share to Zimri, they would not have ended up with the same amount at the end."

I know I'm not the only one who realized this. But I'm a little embarrassed to say that in the margins of my notebook at this point I felt compelled to actually work out the mathematics. I came to the exact difference pretty easily (Abram would have ended up with only 4/5 the amount that Zimri had), but the concept is easy to explain without numbers. Imagine Zimri sneaking a third of his harvest into Abram's pile. Then Abram comes along to his newly enlarged pile (but he doesn't know it's just been enlarged) and he takes a third of that over to Zimri's pile. Since the pile he took from is bigger than Zimri's original, 1/3 of his pile is also bigger than 1/3 of Zimri's original pile. Zimri got more back than he gave. I even drew an illustration so you can visualize that.

(I also think it's suspicious that when Abram went out, he didn't notice that his pile was fully twice as big as Zimri's pile.)

The only way this could possibly have worked is if they were both sneaking their shares at the exact same time and didn't happen to run into each other in the process. Which seems doubtful since the very next night they tried it again and did run into each other. Ergo, the story is mathematically flawed!

That's okay. Even if the mathematics don't work out, the principles implicit in the story are still true. The gospel is true too :).

Happy Easter!