Help
make your home like the temple: “Establish
a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house
of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God” (D&C
109:8).
Those of you who know me and who have
been in my home know that my home is generally clean and in order. I loooooooooove having a clean home. I cannot for the life of me feel the spirit in
my home if it is messy. I am just a
better person when I am surrounded by beauty and order. Everything in my home has a place. And it feels good.
What you don’t know, is that I have a
weakness. A weakness that happens to be
a strength for my husband. This weakness
is something that my mother….and his mother….and everyone’s mother…tries to
teach all of her children to overcome.
Do you remember hearing, “Put your shoes away, pleeeeeease!”, or “Please
put you backpack in your room! It doesn’t
belong on the floor.” We all remember hearing these words or something
similar. Well, that virtue never stuck
for me. Until now. (Until now – in my head and in my desires.)
I had this little epiphany the other
day. My home was somewhat messy. In my room, as I was scrounging up my
daughter and all of her bedtime things, I saw the laundry basket full of clean
clothes needing to be put away or ironed.
As I went throughout the house, I really began to notice the little
things I had just left, out of place – to be put back when “I have time”. I saw the little mound of papers in my “action
folder”, the bobby pins next to my bed-side table, the books on the table, the
Amazon box that needed to be returned that had been sitting on the shelf for
two weeks, the tape that had been sitting on the desk for a week, and all of
the hundreds other random little things sitting where they do not belong and
had been sitting there for several days…or longer. The epiphany came suddenly – I do not have
time to clean all of these things AND be the kind of mother and wife and
individual I want to be! And the Still
Small Voice gently whispered to me a solution.
“Just put things away as soon as
you are through with them. Put them ALL
THE WAY away. Not just a haphazard pile “to
sort or take care of later”. Well. That makes sense. I simply do not have time to teach and love
and enjoy my children and husband – PLUS deal with a mess! But I knew that I NEED a clean home, and I
NEEDED to do the things I want to do with my family and self. So, why don’t I just put things away, right
when I finish with them? Do it until it
becomes a habit. And besides, wouldn’t
that then exemplify to my children, in the most powerful way, that this is how
we ought to live? (Side note: I love that word “ought”. It carries such meaning.) If they see me living this way, won’t they
too, over time, follow suit? If I raise
the bar high in my home, my children will grow accustomed to that higher road
and will seek to strive for it in their own lives. I of course, do not mean that cleaning my
home is more important than anything else.
I know people like that, and I do not aspire to it. I just want to establish a house of prayer,
fasting, faith, learning, glory, order, and a house of God. Just like the temple.
The Bible Dictionary defines the
temple as
“…a house of the Lord, a
holy sanctuary in which sacred ceremonies and ordinances of the gospel are
performed by and for the living and also in behalf of the dead. A place where
the Lord may come, it is the most holy of any place of worship on the earth.
Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.” Only the home can compare with the temple in
sacredness. Wow! I want to strive
to that!
Elder
Gary E Stevenson said, in his talk entitled “Sacred Homes, Sacred Temples”,
“Recently, in a stake conference, all present were invited by
the visiting authority, Elder Glen Jenson, an Area Seventy, to take a virtual
tour of their homes using their spiritual eyes. I would like to invite each of
you to do this also. Wherever your home may be and whatever its configuration,
the application of eternal gospel principles within its walls is universal.
Let’s begin. Imagine that you are opening your front door and walking inside
your home. What do you see, and how do you feel? Is it a place of love, peace,
and refuge from the world, as is the temple? Is it clean and orderly? As you
walk through the rooms of your home, do you see uplifting images which include
appropriate pictures of the temple and the Savior? Is your bedroom or sleeping
area a place for personal prayer? Is your gathering area or kitchen a place
where food is prepared and enjoyed together, allowing uplifting conversation
and family time? Are scriptures found in a room where the family can study,
pray, and learn together? Can you find your personal gospel study space? Does
the music you hear or the entertainment you see, online or otherwise, offend
the Spirit? Is the conversation uplifting and without contention? That
concludes our tour. Perhaps you, as I, found a few spots that need some “home
improvement”—hopefully not an ‘extreme home makeover.’
In order to keep the temple and those who attend it sacred and
worthy, the Lord has established standards through His servants, the prophets.
We may be well-advised to consider together, in family council, standards for
our homes to keep them sacred and to allow them to be a “house of the Lord.”
The admonition to “establish … a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house
of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of
God” provides divine insight into the type of home the Lord would have us build. Doing such begins the construction of a "spiritual mansion" in which we all may reside regardless of our worldly circumstance~a home filled with treasure that "neither moth nor rust doth corrupt."
I know that as I place things in their proper order
immediately after I am through with them, my home will become a place of refuge
– even more than it already is. My
children will understand more about the temple by learning how to care for our
home and those thing over which we are stewards. I am excited to turn this weakness into a
strength, and I am so excited to experience the results!
