During Friday morning’s session of BYU Women’s Conference, Jennifer Brinkerhoff Platt spoke about following Christ’s example to love one another.
Platt taught that we can learn how to resist evil by following Christ’s pattern of love, which includes making the ordinary sacred, understanding doctrine and receiving the Holy Ghost.
Make the Ordinary Sacred
Platt detailed an Ethiopian ceremony, called buna, to illustrate how to make the ordinary scared. Ethiopian women gather every day to break from their labors, drink coffee and love one another. In doing so, she said, they ritualize their lives.
“When we do the things we claim to value with the intent of making them sacred, we feel the love of the Lord in our lives,” she said.
Like the Ethiopian buna, she said, we can ritualize ordinary moments in our lives, making them sacred by preparing for them, participating in them and remembering them. Making our bed, driving carpool or saying our prayers can become rituals we use to attune our lives to God’s love.
“Choosing to ritualize the ordinary things we do really does help us to not only feel the Savior’s love for us but to extend it to others,” said Platt.
Understand Doctrine
Platt taught that doctrine is an eternal truth that answers the question, why? A principle is an eternal truth that answers the question, what? An application helps us to know how we should act in doctrine.
“When we understand his doctrine, we know how to love each other and come to him to be refined and perfected,” she said.
Receive the Holy Ghost
In John 13:37, Peter asks, “Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.”
Platt explained that for us, “laying down our lives looks like planning the day and then being open to the disruptions of others knocking at the door and needing you right now even though you are diligently trying to work your list.”
To love like Christ loves, she added, we must be mindful of the spirit, paying attention to the pattern of revelation in our lives.
“We can love one another as Jesus loves us — in ordinary and extraordinary ways,” she said.
