The Fable of the Gullible Gull

I recently had to give a lesson and I searched the general conference talks trying to decide what general conference talk to use for my lesson. I ran on to a talk that was very powful because it was written in 1982 but I could have swear they were talking about 2010. The talk was called "The Celestial Nature of Self-reliance" by President Marion G. Romney
Second Counselor in the First Presidency

In his talk he recites this article from the Readers Digest written 1950
"In our friendly neighbor city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don’t know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved. …

“The shrimpers had created a Welfare State for the … sea gulls. The big birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets.

“Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the ‘something for nothing’ lure! They sacrificed their independence for a handout.

“A lot of people are like that, too. They see nothing wrong in picking delectable scraps from the tax nets of the U.S. Government’s ‘shrimp fleet.’ But what will happen when the Government runs out of goods? What about our children of generations to come?

“Let’s not be gullible gulls. We … must preserve our talents of self-sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence.” (“Fable of the Gullible Gull,” Reader’s Digest, Oct. 1950, p. 32.)

Can you imagine what they would think of our government programs now?

Another day of blessings!