The Lesson of the Pear

Labor day weekend, we went down to Mom and Dad Wierschke's. We have been trying to help them with canning and a few other jobs around the house. Lately I have been thinking a lot about sin and the atonement. As I was peeling the skins off the pears, I was having a hard time with all of the blemishes that were on the skins. The blemishes were not only on the outside but they were on the inside too. Some times they were just bruises and the pears was soft and tender, but the other hard spots seemed like the pear has calcified(for a lack of better terms) around the blemish. As I was thinking this, the thought came to me that we all have "blemishes" aka sins. Some of these blemishes are little brown marks on our outside, nothing that really effects the pear under the skin. These could be those little favorite sins that we can't give up, and that we don't need to see the Bishop for. Those blemishes that are a little darker and bruise the inside of the pear, are quite possibly blemishes that you should give up, maybe they are blemishes that if left alone would be detrimental to the whole pear. The blemishes that are really gross on the outside and when cut into it seems to have calicified the pear around that spot.
When canning the pear you don't want to have these blemishes on your pears or in jars. The pear that has the little blemish on the outside is easily removed when we blanch the pears. The pears with a blemish that bruised the fruit of the pear, I simply take a knife and gently cut the bruise off. The blemish that calcifies the pear is a little harder. I have to cut out what I can with a pear knife and then I have to take a sharp knife and cut the rest out.

In one of these cases none of the pears were beyond canning. All were able to be saved. So it is with the Atonement and us. We all have sins to different degrees, all can be taken off through the Atonement. None of us are to far gone to be saved, there are no limitations or stipulations on the Atonement.