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Where much is given, much is expected, not only in scholastic achievement and developing talents but also in conduct and the way we present ourselves.
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"This is the eighth time I have addressed the student body of Brigham Young University at the beginning of the Fall Semester. It is always a humbling experience for me. You have a right to expect a significant and useful message, and that poses a great challenge for the President of the University. In trying to meet that challenge I usually reemphasize some things I have said before. I do this because each year I face a new group; only about half of you were here last year, and less than that the year before. Part of my responsibility is, therefore, to stress the same ideals, to reaffirm the same truths, and to give the same advice. Hopefully, my message will be enriched by new experience and new insights that will offer an element of interest to the faculty and others who have heard it before. But my most important objective is to encourage you to do your part to keep BYU and its students on the same steady course we have pursued for over a century, reaffirming the unchanging ideals and truths and the advice that has proven its worth for generations.
Each of us knows the law of the harvest: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7), and “He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully” (2 Corinthians 9:6). There are a few areas of human activity where the law of the harvest applies more directly than in the pursuit of the knowledge. Those of you who sow sparingly will reap sparingly in the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual accomplishment. The same is true of spirituality. Oh, there will be examples where a person who has sown sparingly may reap a higher grade or be called to a more significant and apparently more desirable church position than one who has sown diligently. But there are things more important than grades or positions; those are only means to an end. In terms of real progress toward our final goals, which are knowledge and eternal life, the law of the harvest is inexorable.
There is another aspect of the law of the harvest, also of eternal significance. It is expressed in the familiar saying, “Where much is given, much is expected.” When the Lord of the harvest has lavished great attention on a particular portion of his vineyard, he expects it to bear fruit, at least in proportion to the attention he has lavished. The prophet Isaiah illustrated this expectation when he described the Lord of the vineyard who “fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine,” and “looked that it should bring forth grapes. . . .” When it brought forth wild grapes instead, the Lord of the vineyard cried out in anguish, “What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?” Why, he asked, when he looked for it to bring forth good fruit, did it fail? Then he called his servants to take away the hedge, break down the wall, and lay waste to the vineyard. “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel,” Isaiah explains, and when the Lord, considering all the advantages he had bestowed upon this chosen people, “looked for judgment, but [beheld] oppression; [looked] for righteousness, but [beheld] a cry,” he decreed that the vineyard should be made desolate (Isaiah 5:1-7). Where much is given, much is expected.
The Savior reemphasized the same thought in the parable of the barren fig tree:
A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.
Then he said unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? [Luke 13:6-7]
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6 сен 2024
