Ongofu - an LDS (Mormon) blog

An ecosystem includes you and all that surrounds you.  It’s the whole of your environment and the affect that it has on you.

Ecosystems are powerful things, and they have a big impact on their inhabitants.  Within any ecosystem you’ll find creatures that have been shaped and fashioned to thrive within its unique set of characteristics.  Sometimes that’s a hot, humid environment; sometimes it’s one that is dry and arid.

Whatever the case may be, your ecosystem plays a large role in how you grow and develop.

So that begs the question, what IS your ecosystem?

For even on a spiritual (and emotional) plane, you are highly impacted by that which surrounds you.

What kind of music plays in your home, on your iPod, or in your car?  What pictures hang on your walls?  What friends are in your network?  What activities fill your day?

All of these questions, and others, help us determine the kind of ecosystem that we live in.  The good news is that we have control over much of our ecosystem.  We can determine whether the bulk of that ecosystem is positive, uplifting, and inspiring, and make moves to change those things that aren’t.

More importantly, as you build an ecosystem that is centered on Christ, whenever something enters your life that is contrary to that focus, it naturally finds itself in a foreign and unwelcome environment, and the ecosystem plays its part in purging it.  The purer your ecosystem is, the less tolerant you’ll find you are to things that would jeopardize that purity.

Hundreds of years ago the pioneers left us a legacy illustrating how important THEY thought it was to find themselves in the accompaniment of the saints.  They sacrificed much, to be in the society of saints, to belong to an ecosystem that would push them upward.

May we be equally aware of the ecosystems to which we belong.

Rusty