Lessons in Giving Gifts of Light

Gifts of Light

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, and to share His light. Indeed, this is our sesquicentennial theme: Celebrating Gifts of Light.¹

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 that 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 has the single largest undergraduate student body on any brick-and-mortar private campus in America. 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 Spencer W. Kimball spoke about in his prophetic address “The Second Century of Brigham Young University.”²

On average, 70 percent 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, and business, community, and religious leaders. And yes, there are even a few washed-up stats professors among us.

BYU graduates are also 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 alumni serving in the last two sessions of Congress than did most Ivy League schools.³ In the Paris Olympics, no less than nine current or former BYU student-athletes competed.⁴ Kenneth Rooks, who graduated with a degree in civil engineering in spring 2025, took silver.

I hope we see from these examples that there are few limits on our 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 our Savior, Jesus Christ.

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 discount at 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 gifts of light we can share with others” so “that light groweth brighter and brighter” and “that all may be edified of all.”⁵

Gifts We Can Share to Uplift Others

In a masterful address on gifts that he delivered on this very campus, President Henry B. Eyring, second counselor in the First Presidency, offered the following principles for becoming an expert giver of gifts. I invite us all to reflect on these three principles as we consider the gifts that we can share to uplift those around us.

President Eyring taught:

When you’re on the receiving end [of a gift] , you will discover three things in great gift givers: (1) they felt what you felt . . . , (2) they gave freely, and (3) they counted sacrifice a bargain.⁶

President Eyring has shared numerous stories over the years, but I’d like to underscore just two that 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 says something like “I hate school.” (None of you here would ever say that!) President Eyring explained that after some digging, we might come to realize it’s not school itself the child hates but rather the fear of failure. President Eyring admitted that he had experienced similar feelings after concluding he couldn’t do math.

Luckily, in the Eyring household there was a single decoration in the family room: a green chalkboard.

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 a compensation the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave him, in 1977, its highest honor, other than the Nobel Prize, the Berzelius Medal in gold.⁷

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 by even the Nobel Committee itself! Not too shabby.

In short, maybe we would all do well to incorporate a green chalkboard into our family room decor.

Well, there at the family chalkboard, father and son toiled together on math problems.

President Eyring reflected:

I didn’t wonder if I could work the math problems; I’d proved to my satisfaction that I couldn’t. . . .

But Dad wasn’t satisfied. He thought I could do it. So we took turns at that 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.⁸

Now on to the parable of the red cherries.

President Eyring was at his father’s home after the passing of President Eyring’s mother. Friends and family stopped by to pay their respects. Finally the Eyrings 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.

President Eyring recalled:

When they’d walked just a few feet past the vestibule, 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 and the shining gold cap on the mason jar. He said, “You might enjoy these. You probably haven’t had dessert.”

We . . . sat around the kitchen table and . . . ate [red cherries] as Uncle Bill and Aunt Catherine cleared some dishes [and offered to call relatives who hadn’t yet been contacted].

. . . 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.⁹

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 gave freely. And as they did so, they counted 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 had sold his birthright to Jacob for a mess 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 his neck, and kissed him: and they wept.”¹⁰

The Magi brought gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh to the Christ child but also gave 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, ¹¹ brought Christ “an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on [Jesus’s] head, as he sat at meat.” ¹²

Some believed the gift was wasteful, asking why such precious ointment wasn’t sold and the money “given to the poor.”¹³

Christ Himself rebuked such reasoning:

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.¹⁴

As president of BYU, I have 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 gifted by a foreign dignitary that was made from carefully hand-cut fragments of paper pasted together. [A picture of the vase was shown.] The art form, as I understand it, symbolizes the impressions that collectively create our view of life.

As a math nerd, I can’t resist sharing this next gift that 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 gömböc shape gifted by visiting representatives from Hungary. [A picture was shown.] It’s a three-dimensional body that has “just one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium when resting on a flat surface.”¹⁵ Such bodies provide insight into how a tortoise might have the capacity to flip itself upright after lying on its back. The gömböc class of bodies was first theorized by a Russian mathematician but was finally proven by Hungarian scientists some 20 years ago when they created 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.

The Greatest Gift of Light

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 section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants, what do we profit if we are given a gift but don’t receive it? To reject the gift is to reject the giver.¹⁶

When I was a young man, not many people—including 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 family that hung diplomas on their walls. For starters, no one had diplomas. But we did, thankfully, have walls.

As a single mom, my mother heroically moved us to New Mexico when I was just a few months old. She put her own education on the shelf but made sure that my 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 the campus of 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 ACT would send your score for free to schools they recommended. But, for no additional expense, there were also two blank spots you got to fill in with schools you chose. The first spot on that list was easy: Utah State University. My mom had taken some classes there, 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 leader. Some years earlier he had taken a group of us kids to a BYU basketball game against the University of New Mexico.

Before we had entered the basketball arena, he had handed me a BYU hat and said with a smile that wearing it was the price of admission. 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 our Young Men activity, we learned a few new, colorful words. But we had fun. It also helped that BYU won the game. 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 sorrow of sin that would fall on all of us and everyone else who would ever live. . . .

. . . 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 with him. . . .

If that warms you as it does me, you may well want to give a gift to the Savior.¹⁷

The Magi and Mary gave what they could. I invite each of you to share your gifts for the glory of the Savior—give your gold, give your frankincense, give your alabaster box, and give 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.”¹⁸

Jesus Christ’s light casts out all darkness.

No matter your past, Jesus will help and heal. He overcame sin so that you and I can become clean. Choose Him. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. ¹⁹ I promise His “grace is sufficient for you.” ²⁰ As you experience the greatest gift of light, I witness you will become beacons of light to this world that so desperately needs light.

I love you students. You are children of God, children of covenant, and disciples of Jesus Christ. ²¹ I so testify of this in His holy name, even the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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