"Sacred Homes, Sacred Temples"

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!