Foremost in Your Minds and Hearts

In his final address in the most recent general conference, President Nelson spoke about temples and suggested that the temples will be reopened once local government regulations will allow it. With most temples still closed to proxy ordinances, he gave us this invitation concerning the temple: “Meanwhile, keep your temple covenants and blessings foremost in your minds and hearts. Stay true to the covenants you have made.” He then announced plans to build 20 more temples, showing that for him the temple was indeed foremost in his mind. He declared, “We are building now for the future!” We too should be preparing ourselves for the future and the opportunity when the pandemic is over to participate more fully and frequently the ordinances of the temple.

                I am very grateful to live near a place where a new temple is under construction. My son has helped me to follow President Nelson’s invitation to keep the temple in my mind and heart as he frequently requests that we take the longer way home from various places so that we can drive by the temple and see the progress on the temple. That same son recently has been struggling with some personal challenges, and I decided to put his name on the temple roll, which gratefully we can do now online even if we can’t go to the temple. It was soon thereafter that things significantly improved for him, and looking back I believe it was indeed the power of the temple that helped him. David wrote this about how prayer helped him in the temple: “In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears” (2 Samuel 22:7). I know there is a power in prayers uttered inside the house of the Lord, and I encourage those with particularly difficult challenges for themselves or their loved ones—which they would normally take to the temple pleading for help—to prayerfully put names on the temple prayer role.

               Perhaps another way that we can follow President Nelson’s invitation to keep the temple covenants and blessings at the forefront of our hearts and minds is to think on the temple and the prayers we say there as we pray personally in our homes. It is instructive to see what the people did in the story of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. It was his duty to “execute the priest’s office” and he went in “to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.” Only one could enter to perform this duty, but I am impressed by what others were doing when he went in: “And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense” (Luke 1:8-10). It was in that visit that the angel came to declare to him that Elisabeth would bear him a son, and I have to wonder if it wasn’t in part due to the faith of the people and their prayers, in addition to the constant prayers of Elisabeth and John, that had made that miracle a reality for them. Though we too may be “without” (i.e. outside) the temple for a time, we can like this people join in prayer with the temple in mind and focus on the prayers that we will soon pray there again. As President Nelson declared, “Temples are a vital part of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in its fulness. Ordinances of the temple fill our lives with power and strength available in no other way. We thank God for those blessings.” I am grateful for that power and strength and also thank God for the marvelous blessing of temples.