OUT OF THIS WORLD

Yesterday was our night to work in the temple, helping patrons as they performed ordinances for the dead.  There is an atmosphere of peace and comfort as you enter the temple that makes it a wonderful place to work.  We both look forward to our night out together, helping others receive the blessings that are there.

Jordan River Temple where we serve each week.

Each evening begins with a preparation meeting to help us be aware of things that will happen during the shift.  We also receive instruction on how to help patrons as they come to bless themselves and their ancestors with the extended covenants available to them.  Most times the instruction is pretty basic and entails reminders of procedures or policies. 

Manti Temple where Teresa and I were sealed.

But our meeting this week was very different……..at least to me.

A member of the Temple Presidency asked to have a few minutes (which is not really that unusual) to share a few things.  He began with an experience a member had in coming to the temple just the night before.  The details are not important, except to say that this particular patron came to the temple seeking comfort and refuge from a circumstance that had brought great anguish to his life. 

Mesa, Arizona Temple where I received my endowment.

With that as the basis, the member of the presidency then challenged each of us as workers to consider how well we have done in keeping the ‘world’ out of the temple so it can be a place of peace for those who come.  His questions went something like this:

n Are your conversations with other workers in the temple about the things of God or the things of the world?

n What do you think about as you wait for the next opportunity to serve?

n Can you say that you have helped make this temple a place of peace and freedom from the buffetings of the world and the adversary?

And so on!!!

San Diego Temple -- right off the freeway and
very beautiful.

I will confess that there were plenty of guilty feelings in my heart and soul.  And I determined to look more closely at how I was focused as I served the Lord in His holy house.

 

It made a difference in my night.

It also reminded me that my life needs to have less connection with some of the things I like to think are important if I am going to do as the Savior has commanded:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.  Ye cannot serve God and mammon.  (Matthew 6:24)

The prophets teach us that our home is sacred, similar to a temple, and should be a place where we can find peace and security from the adversary.  But over time, if we aren’t careful, we may begin to drift and interrupt, or eliminate the sheltering sacredness that is our home. 

The drift from the sure moorings of godliness generally starts with little things – maybe just a show or song that we like or a little habit that seems so innocent, despite some part that is not conducive to the Spirit.  And then it grows and, if we don’t do something quickly, it becomes a creeping plague that seeks destroys all the good we have tried to establish in the personal bastion of liberty we have from worldliness.

A picture taken from near the Bingham copper mine in Salt Lake County.
You can see seven Temples from the mountain.

There is much good that we can take from the world, but the only way to keep out the bad is to use the sieve of the Holy Spirit.  He knows what will lift and what will tear down. 

Too bad we don’t have a meter that gives us a ratio of World vs. God in our lives. I guess we will just have to rely on that gift of the Holy Ghost to get the answer. J