This Life is the Time

President Nelson said this in his final talk of the most recent general conference: “Yes, we should learn from the past, and yes, we should prepare for the future. But only now can we do. Now is the time we can learn. Now is the time we can repent. Now is the time we can bless others and ‘lift up the hands which hang down.’” This is similar to the counsel that Amulek gave to the Zoramites: “For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors…. therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed” (Alma 34:32-33). Amulek uses the phrase “day of this life” twice in these verse to highlight just how short our lives are: they are as a single day. And so now is always the best time to repent and to learn and “improve our time” so that we can prepare ourselves for eternity. The older I get the faster the time goes and the more I realize how precious our time is. We often suggest that it is never too late to repent, but someday it will be too late! Samuel the Lamanite taught the Nephites that if they didn’t repent eventually they would hear these words: “But behold, your days of probation are past; ye have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure” (Helaman 13:38). If we don’t want to one day hear those words, then now is the time that we must seek the Lord. There are many things out of our control in this life, but as President Nelson emphasized, “There are some things we can control, including how we spend our time each day.” Perhaps then the most important way we can use our time is to repent and learn to align our actions with what God would have us do.

                In this talk President Nelson suggested one way that we should seek to spend our time: “Positive spiritual momentum increases as we worship in the temple and grow in our understanding of the magnificent breadth and depth of the blessings we receive there. I plead with you to counter worldly ways by focusing on the eternal blessings of the temple. Your time there brings blessings for eternity.” The world of course would have us focus on the accumulation of material possessions and the endless activities it offers. Someone once described what the world constantly seeks in these words: “Bigger, better, faster, more.” We want bigger houses, better entertainment, faster cars, and more stuff. But one day we will realize that all of this mattered very little. Isaiah said this about how we will consider our riches and the things of this world in a future day: “In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which he hath made for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats.” They are things for the bats and moles, but temples and the work we do there will last forever. Sister Susa Young Gates, a prominent Latter-day Saint a century ago who focused her efforts on temple and family history work, expressed her frustration with the Saints of her day: “She believed that too many Latter-day Saints exhibited ‘a very general indifference’ toward genealogy and temple work. ‘Not even an angel from heaven could induce some of these club women and these successful business men to set aside a portion of their time for temple work,’ Susa wrote to a friend.” For some perhaps not much has changed in a century—the world still seeks to busy our lives with “lesser things” so that we are distracted from that which is of most importance. We can seek, though, as the hymn teaches, to “give heart and soul and mind and strength to serve the King of Kings.” Otherwise if we don’t, and if what we have sought most earnestly in this life is the riches of this world, they will “canker [our] souls” and this may be our lamentation in some future day: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and my soul is not saved!” (Doctrine and Covenants 56:16)