We had the amazing opportunity yesterday to sit here yesterday and listen to a Prophet of God. It was, well, amazing. (OK, so I'm not one of the professional writers in our family, I'll admit.)
As I stood on the front steps of this temple, I saw this (which is also where I had just been to drop off #2 and #3 Messmakers, a short ten-minute drive away):
From that same spot, I saw this:
On a clearer day, I most likely could have seen this:
And about a 25 minute drive away, just around the bend in the mountains, I knew this temple stood:
When I walked out of my garage this morning, I looked across the valley and saw this:
Within an hours drive from my home, I can attend one of eight temples. In my state there are 13 operating temples (well, come Monday).
At the temple dedication, BJ's dad spoke about families in Mongolia, who in order to receive the blessings of the temple, sell literally every one of their earthly possessions, and travel by train for three days (and this is no Amtrax, people) to receive their endowments and be sealed as a family for time and all eternity in the Hong Kong temple. Add the three-day train trip home, this family has traveled by train for one full week and sacrificed everything they own to attend the temple. It takes me 10 minutes to drive to the closest temple. And talk about a temple district: the Hong Kong temple serves half the population of the world. Our temple district serves the population of one small county in one small state in the U.S.
As I took a painfully honest look back at my temple attendance over the last 11 years of my life, I was not exactly thrilled. We have not been horrible in our attendance, but it sure wasn't a track record I'd be comfortable presenting to my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, given my amazing access to temples here.
How many people do we know who, while living in the shadow of the temple, have chosen to walk away from those covenants? And do you think that family who sacrificed everything they had and spent an entire week just to go to the temple once would ever dream of betraying those covenants after those sacrifices had been made?
IT OCCURS TO ME THAT (wow, this had better be good, I'm using all caps here) the things that matter the most to us in life are the things that we have sacrificed the most for. Maybe when things are just a bit too easy, we end of taking them for granted. Perhaps if we really had to sacrifice for what we believed, it would mean that much more to us. Perhaps.
Maybe if I had to run away from a mob with my three children, leaving my house and everything in it behind, just because I believed in a book; or maybe if my entire family treated me as if I were dead, or even tried to have me killed, because I listened to two white, Christian missionaries from some strange church; or maybe if I poured my own actual blood, sweat and tears into building a temple so that one day my great-great-great grandchildren could pass by six temples in the course of a day . . . maybe I'd make that temple an absolute center point in my life. Maybe.
So, next time you're weeding or scrubbing your house or exercising or any one of those tasks where you distract yourself by letting your mind wander, think about what really means the most to you in your life, and the sacrifices you make every day that make those things so important to you.
