Our Individual Worth
By Daniela Seare
The last few weeks I have been trying to figure out what I should do as my topic for this paper. While trying to find something that caught my interest, I came across a youth message on lds.org. It was from a CES devotional talk by Elder Uchtdorf, entitled, The Reflection in the Water made into the youth video message, Our True Identity.. Individual worth is such a vital part of our eternal lives, as well as our personal understanding and relationship with our Heavenly Father. I think it is too often we overlook the importance of them, and I hope to shed some light on the vitality of these principles and their need in our eternal existence.
Elder Uchtdorf begin by recalling a story that many of us have heard before. It was the story of the Ugly Duckling. He tells how the ugly duckling, being different and bigger than the others, thought that he would never be worth anything. He ran away thinking his family would be better off without him. It wasn’t until he looked into the water at his reflection that he realized his true identity as a majestic and beautiful swan. My favorite part of the message is when Uchtdorf explains that we are “sons and daughters of a most high God”. We are directly related to our Heavenly Father and our brother, Jesus Christ. We need not judge our personal identity and worth based off of worldly expectations, but based off of the inspired knowledge that we are literally sons and daughters of a King. In Abraham 3:22 it says, ‘Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones.’ We are those noble and great ones chose to live in these latter-days. One teacher I had at EFY, taught us this lesson of self-worth. He showed us a short scene from a movie I am sure many of you have seen, Toy Story. Buzz Light-Year and Woody are under a car, facing the dilemma of being stuck in a place that...