Utterly Wasted

When the prophet Moroni visited the young Joseph Smith he quoted the last verse of the Old Testament this way: “And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. If it were not so, the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming” (JSH 1:39). That language is repeated in Doctrine and Covenants 2:2-3, the first section in that book of scripture when read chronologically. The final section of the same book includes similar language from President Joseph F. Smith: “The Prophet Elijah was to plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to their fathers, Foreshadowing the great work to be done in the temples of the Lord in the dispensation of the fulness of times, for the redemption of the dead, and the sealing of the children to their parents, lest the whole earth be smitten with a curse and utterly wasted at his coming” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:47-48). So that makes three times in the scriptures that this phrase that the earth will be “utterly wasted” unless the children are turned to their fathers. It is easy to perhaps think, “Well, Elijah came and the work of family history and temples has been initiated, so gratefully the earth won’t be utterly wasted or smitten with a curse.” But I believe this scriptures was also meant to be personalized—our own lives will be wasted if we don’t turn our hearts to our fathers and our children and help them do the same. Extending this further, we might say on any given day that our time that day has been wasted if we have not done something to turn our own hearts to our children or to our fathers. To use the words quoted by Elder Anderson in a talk about children: “It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in.  It is what God gave you time for.”

              One of my favorite quotes about the power of doing just that comes from Sister Nelson in a 2017 devotional she gave with her husband. She questioned, “It is my testimony that however fabulous your life is right now, or however discouraging and heartbreaking it may be, your involvement in temple and family history work will make it better. What do you need in your life right now? More love? More joy? More self-mastery? More peace? More meaningful moments? More of a feeling that you’re making a difference? More fun? More answers to your soul-searching questions? More heart-to-heart connections with others? More understanding of what you are reading in the scriptures? More ability to love and to forgive? More ability to pray with power? More inspiration and creative ideas for your work and other projects? More time for what really matters? I entreat you to make a sacrifice of time to the Lord by increasing the time you spend doing temple and family history work, and then watch what happens.” President Nelson followed up with this invitation: “We can be inspired all day long about temple and family history experiences others have had. But we must do something to actually experience the joy ourselves. I would like to extend a challenge to each one of us so that the wonderful feeling of this work can continue and even increase. I invite you to prayerfully consider what kind of sacrifice—preferably a sacrifice of time—you can make in order to do more temple and family history work this year.” This is consistent with the Prophet Joseph’s powerful invitation to the Saints then and now to similarly make an offering to the Lord in this regard: “Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; and let us present in his holy temple, when it is finished, a book containing the records of our dead, which shall be worthy of all acceptation” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:24). Surely no matter how little time we have we can still make some time for this great work, for if we don’t we may look back and realize we have indeed wasted the time the Lord has given us. So when we type in a browser and type “w w w . f a”, let’s make the next letter an m and not a c and go to www.familysearch.org instead of www.facebook.com (which, as my wife describes, is Facebook for the dead and much less divisive!). Or when we have a minute to spend at a computer, surely we won’t regret it if we use that to do the very thing God gave us time for and read about an ancestor or index a historical record or record our family’s own history. Then we can be sure that our time indeed was not wasted.