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Welcome to the Recent Speeches podcast presented by BYU Speeches, featuring inspiring new devotionals and forums given each week on BYU Campus. Be sure to check out our other podcasts by searching BYU Speeches wherever you get your podcasts or by visiting speeches BYU Edu Podcasts.
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This devotional address entitled Lessons in Giving Gifts of Light was given on September 16th of 2025 by C. Shane Reese, then President of BYU. My dear students, the answer to darkness is light. The answer to evil is Christ. He is the ultimate gift of light. And the goal for you and me this year, our 150th year as a university, is to grow, to celebrate, to to share his light. Indeed, this is our sesquicentennial theme celebrating Gifts of Light. We can start by exercising greater faith in Him. While there is room to grow, we are making progress. In recent years, BYU has seen a marked increase in the percentage of BYU students reporting their faith in Jesus Christ and His living prophets and apostles has increased during their time on campus. This growing collective witness of Jesus Christ is nothing short of powerful. Think of it for a moment. Brigham Young University is the single largest undergraduate student body on any brick and mortar private campus in America. And we welcome all of you new freshmen. You are part of one of the largest classes to ever enter this university. Collectively, we all join with more than 466,000 living alumni across the globe. And our numbers grow even larger when we combine with all the graduates of the Church educational system. Alone, your light cannot be hid. Together, your light floods the earth. You are indeed the brilliant stars President Kimball spoke about in his prophetic address, the second century of Brigham Young University. On average, 70% of BYU graduates serve missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Tens of thousands of BYU alumni currently serve the world as educators, nurses, doctors, attorneys, social workers, engineers, family therapists, accountants, members of the armed forces, chaplains, first responders, business, community and religious leaders. And yes, there are even a few washed up stats. Professors among us BYU graduates are more likely to carry the sacred titles of mother, father, husband, wife, aunt, uncle, ministering, brother or sister, friend and disciple of Jesus Christ. According to an analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education published earlier this year, BYU had more undergraduate alums serving in the last two sessions of Congress than did most Ivy League schools. There you go. Amen. In the Paris Olympics, no less than nine current or former BYU student athletes competed. Kenneth Rooks, who graduated with a degree in civil engineering in the spring, took silver. Yeah. Let's go. I hope you see from these examples that there are few limits on your potential to influence this world for the better. But our light grows to its fullest brilliance only as we draw closer to the greatest gift ever given, even that of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, as a new grandpa, I'm once again learning the art of birthdays. They're about cake and ice cream, and if you're my age, the senior discounted Denny's. But as any good grandpa knows, birthdays are also about gifts. And our 150th anniversary as a university is about the gifts of light given to us and the gifts of light we can share with others so that light groweth brighter and brighter, that all may be edified of all. In a masterful address on gifts delivered on this very campus, from this very pulpit, President Henry B. Eyring, second Counselor in the First Presidency, on offered the following principles of becoming an expert giver of gifts. I invite all of us to reflect on these three principles as we consider the gifts we can share to uplift those around us. When you're on the receiving end of a gift, President Eyring taught, you will discover three things in great gift givers. One, they felt what you felt. Two, they gave freely, and three, they counted sacrifice a bargain. Now, President Eyring has shared numerous stories over the years, but I'd like to underscore just two which help to illustrate these three principles of giving. Let's call these stories the Parable of the Green Chalkboard and the Parable of the Red Cherries. First, allow me to share the Parable of the Green Chalkboard. We might come home one day to a child who would say something like, I hate school. None of you here would ever say that. President Eyring explained, after some digging that we might come to realize it's not school itself the child hates, but rather the fear of failure. President Eyring admitted he himself had experienced similar feelings after concluding that he couldn't do math. Luckily, in the Eyring household, there was a single decoration in the family room, a green chalkboard. Now, if that seems strange, let me read a brief passage from an article published on the Nobel Prize's website about President Eyring's father, Henry Eyring, a world class chemist, the article reads. Henry Eyring's brilliant theory for the rates of chemical reactions, published in 1935, was apparently not understood by members of the Nobel Committee until much later. As compensation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave him in 1977 its highest honor other than the Nobel Prize, the Berzelius Medal in gold. In other words. The Nobel Prize's own website acknowledges that the only reason President Eyring's father didn't win a Nobel Prize was because his theory was simply not grasped even by the Nobel Committee itself. Not too shabby. In short, maybe we'd all do well to incorporate a green chalkboard into our family room decor. While there at the family chalkboard, father and son toiled together on math problems. I didn't wonder if I could work the math problems, President Eyring reflected. I'd proven to my satisfaction that I couldn't. But dad wasn't satisfied. He thought I could do it. So we took turns at the chalkboard. I can't remember the gifts my dad wrapped and helped put under a tree, but I remember the chalkboard and his quiet voice. Now, onto the parable of the red cherries. President Eyring was with his father after the passing of President Irene's mother. At home, friends and family stopped by to pay their respects. Finally, they had a moment to eat a snack before more visitors arrived. It was getting late, but they still hadn't turned off the lights when President Eyring's Aunt Catherine and Uncle Bill stopped by. When they walked just a few feet past the vestibule, President Eyring recalled, Uncle Bill extended his hand and I could see that he was holding a bottle of cherries. I can still see the deep red, almost purple cherries in the shiny gold cap on the jar. Uncle Bill spoke and said, you might enjoy these. You probably haven't had dessert. Then they sat around a table and ate red cherries as Aunt Catherine and Uncle Bill cleared some dishes and offered to call relatives who hadn't yet been contacted. President Eyring said, I knew that Uncle Bill and Aunt Catherine had felt what I was feeling and had been touched. I can't remember the taste of the cherries, but I remember that someone knew my heart and cared. As we celebrate and spread gifts of light this year, remember the profound lessons in these parables. The giver felt the needs of the receiver, and they gave freely, and they did so, counting the sacrifice, a bargain. In the Book of Genesis, you'll remember how Jacob prepared to see his angry brother Esau after many years of estrangement. This is the same Esau who sold his birthright to Jacob for a message of pottage. Jacob began preparing gifts for his brother and sent them in advance in an effort to reconcile. It worked. Esau, we read, ran to meet Jacob and embraced him and fell on him and kissed his neck, and they wept. The magi brought gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh to the Christ child. But they also gave to the Christ child their desert journey, their diligence in seeking the signs of his coming, and their faith and devotion. Similarly, the woman identified in the Gospel of John as Mary, the sister of Lazarus, brought Christ an alabaster box of very precious ointment and poured it on Jesus head as he sat at meat. Some believe the gift was wasteful, asking why such a precious ointment wasn't sold and the money given to the poor. Christ himself rebuked such reasoning and said, why trouble ye the woman? For she hath wrought a good work upon me. She hath poured this ointment on my body. She did it for my burial. Now my office has the privilege of receiving visiting dignitaries from every imaginable inch of the globe. They bring remarkable gifts to share their culture and heritage and to express gratitude for this university. This is an image of a vase given by a foreign dignitary, made from carefully hand cut fragments of paper pasted together. The art form, as I understand it, symbolizes the impressions which collectively create our view of life. And as a math nerd, I can't resist sharing this gift, which holds a special place in my heart and in my office. Brace yourself, because what I'm about to share may induce drowsiness. You are looking at a Gombox shape gifted by visiting representatives from the country of Hungary. It is a three dimensional body which has a single stable and unstable equilibrium point when resting on a level surface. Such bodies provide insight into such things, like how a tortoise might have the capacity to flip itself upright after laying on its back. The Gombach class of bodies was first theorized by a Russian mathematician, but finally proven by these Hungarian scientists some 20 years ago when they create examples like this one. Now, if you're planning to purchase one of these for that special someone this year in time for Christmas, I strongly recommend acting right now while supplies last. Dear students, can you see how gifts uplift and what they symbolize? Can you see why it's important as disciples of Christ to be excellent givers and receivers of gifts of light? To paraphrase the Lord's instruction to us in Doctrine and covenants, section 88, what do we profit if given a gift but we don't receive it? To reject the gift is to reject the giver. As a young man, not many people, including and especially mostly me, would have picked me out of a lineup to become the future president of Brigham Young University. You see, I did not grow up in a house, in a family that hung diplomas on their walls. For starters, no one had diplomas. But we did, thankfully, have walls. My mother heroically raised me as a single mom and moved us to New Mexico when I was just a few months old and put her own education on the shelf. But my mom made sure that education was a top priority. It was almost comical how much she hyped college in my young mind. Honestly, I became convinced that college was just another term for a Carnival cruise. So you can imagine my confusion when I first stepped foot on America's most stone cold sober university. I count it a miracle that I ended up at byu. In fact, it took a small gift of light to get me here. Let me explain. Back in my day, the company that administered the acts would send your score for free to schools they recommended. But there were also two blank spots you got to fill in with schools you chose for no additional expense. The first spot on that list was easy. Utah State University. My mom took some classes there and felt that's where she'd and I felt that's where she hoped I'd end up. I was stumped, however, on the second one. I hadn't toured many campuses and I knew mostly local schools. But then, in a moment of heavenly inspiration, I recalled a hat I had in my bedroom. A gift from a young men's leader. He had taken a group of us kids to a BYU basketball game against the University of New Mexico some years earlier. Before we entered the basketball arena, he handed me a BYU hat and said with a smile that wearing it was the price of of admission. So I put on the hat and waltzed into this extraordinarily hostile venue known locally as the Pit. The surrounding crowd that night made us pay for it. That night at Young Men's, we learned a few new colorful words, but we had fun. It also helped that BYU won the game. And I felt something special, a kindling of a light, by daring to be different right in my own backyard with that brand new BYU hat atop my head. In the years that followed, BYU didn't just launch my education or my career. It launched my eternal marriage to my eternal companion and my relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the gift and the light of the world. As President Eyring taught, God the Father gave his son and Jesus Christ gave us the atonement, the greatest of all gifts and all giving. They somehow felt all the pain and the sorrow of sin that would fall on all of us and everyone else who would ever live, president Eyring continued, jesus gave the gift freely, willingly to us all. All men and women come into this life with that gift. They will live again. And if they will, they may live again with Him. If that warms you as it does me, president Eyring concluded, you may well want to give a gift to the Savior. Magi and Mary gave what they could. I invite you, each of you, to share your gifts for the glory of the Savior. Give your gold, give your frankincense, give your alabaster box, your gifts of light. As you do so, the light in your life and the light on this campus will grow brighter and brighter until the perfect day. Jesus Christ's light casts out all darkness. No matter your past. Jesus will help and heal. He overcame sin so you and I can become clean. Choose him, love God and love your neighbor as yourself. I promise his grace is sufficient for you. As you experience the greatest gift of light, I witness you will become beacons of light to this world that so desperately needs it. I love you students. You are children of God, children of the covenant, and disciples of Jesus Christ. I so testify of this in his holy name, even the sacred name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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