My youngest daughter changed up some of the music she was practicing and this song ran through for a while.
Have I done any good in the world today?
Have I helped anyone in need?
Have I cheered up the sad and made someone feel glad?
If not, I have failed indeed.
Has anyone’s burden been lighter today
Because I was willing to share?
Have the sick and the weary been helped on their way?
When they needed my help was I there?
It is a good question. How often do you think of “pure religion” in what you do and ask yourself that question?
New International Version (©1984)
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
or
GOD’S WORD® Translation (©1995)
Pure, unstained religion, according to God our Father, is to take care of orphans and widows when they suffer and to remain uncorrupted by this world.King James Bible
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world.
How pure and undefiled is your religion?
We had a post about being judgmental, what do you judge things by? It is the next step on the road to Zion after all.
Wheat & Tares 
Great question. Lately (since I’ve been free of an administrative calling for a few weeks for the first time in years and years), I’ve been thinking about the meaning of service. Yes, I serve church members, even as a home teacher, and some of those have been close to the widow and orphan categories. But I find myself wondering how to extend the net, so to speak. Good to think about.
Stephen et al.:
Do you think the Church net of helping people is unnecessarily small at the local level?
One frequent criticism I hear is that Church keeps us so busy that we don’t often have time to render help/service/volunteer elsewhere. As such, our individual nets are limited both spatially and otherwise.
I’ve known “administrators” in the Church who do nothing else than run their callings (and they can’t with all the time they spend), and even local leaders who simply have no time to spend between work, family and the Church. And, in many of these callings, they have no time to relate or help on a personal basis with the poor or needy or widowed.
Some people – myself included at times – simply give detached gifts (i.e. fast offerings) as a way to justify how I interact with those who need more.
That being said, I wonder if the methodology we use (i.e. detached giving) isn’t better replaced with in-person giving. Because, honestly, we learn precious little when we just give $25-$50 or something once a month as compared to cooking a $50 dinner and delivering it to someone who needs it and/or spending 10 hours at the local food pantry each month.
I think we should do both. Though at times what we do is enable other family members, sometimes they enable us to cast a wider net.
I think, as I’ve been trying to describe in my own most recent posts, that empowering others to fulfill their own callings in the larger society is the essence of what the restoration of the church was originally all about.
I like the comment about serving in the food pantry. I’m trying to serve in the Bishops Storehouse once a month. It’s so much more important than SILLY home teaching reports.
This was our lesson in priesthood today.