What's in your jar?

   One I the things that I get to do once a month is to teach a Relief Society lesson. Relief Society, for those of you that don't know, is the women's organization for those that belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. LDS women  over age 18 are members of Relief Society.
  Every Sunday RS meets for about an hour. Someone is designated to present a lesson each Sunday. This coming Sunday is my turn to teach the lesson.
  This is one of my favourite things to do. I love to teach. I always look forward to the Sundays that I get to teach. There is a manual that I follow and this Sunday  the lesson is titled, "Loving God more than we love the world." I can see I'm about to lose some of you. You're thinking, "Oh no. She's going to preach to us." Keep reading for a bit please.
  When I read over the lesson the first thing that came to me is that this is a lesson about priorities. What is important to us. The next thing that came into my mind was a picture of a glass jar we have in the house. As I thought about it I realized that this is a lesson we could all learn from. It doesn't matter what who you are. It doesn't matter what religion you follow. It doesn't matter if you follow no religion.
  Allow me to present my lesson. This is the secular version.
   Image a glass container. It can be a drinking glass, an elegant stemmed glass, a Mason jar or an ornate vase. It just needs to be a container and made of clear glass. I like to use the image of a glass jar with a simple lid on top. This glass container can represent anything you want. It can be your day, a month, the rest of you life. That glass container can be you, if you want.
  Now that you have a container, the next question is, what do you put into it? It is your container to fill. If the container represents your day for instance, what do you do with your time? There's work, study, eating, sleeping , playing with your kids, watching TV, playing video games, working on a computer, texting and many other things. If the container is you there could be a mixture of happiness, intelligence, stubbornness, loyalty and a little (or a lot) of self doubt. Imagine filling your container with what you do or what you are.
   Now that you've filled you container, step back from it. How does it look? Do you like it? Does the jar contain what you want? Does it show what is important to you? If the jar is you is this how you would like people to see you?
   If it does, good. If it doesn't, don't worry. The neat thing is that it is your container. You can put things in it and you can take things out. You have control over this. If what you see in the jar doesn't look good to you, you can change this. Spend a more time outside and a little less time at the mall. Read that book you always wanted to read. Get rid of junk that you've been meaning to throw away. Make the changes you want to make or maybe need to make. Getting the contents of your container the way you want it may take a long time. It may involve trial and error. It may take a lifetime.
  What you want may change over time. What was important to you now may not be important a few years or even a few weeks from now. That's all right. That's' life.
   What's in your jar?