The Temple of God

To my daughter, 

                We have been watching the construction of the Layton Temple over the past few years, and we are all looking forward to the open house and dedication hopefully sometime soon. As we drove by it yesterday your younger sister saw it and said in awe, “Is that the temple where Mommy was married?” Well, not quite, but it is certainly the temple where we hope as a family to spend a lot of time in the coming years! As you think about that temple, consider these words from Paul: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). He compared our bodies to a temple, and just as the temples are a sacred place so are bodies are a sacred gift from our Father in Heaven. Think about how much money it must have cost for the temple to be built—it was undoubtedly millions of dollars. But you are worth even more because the Savior suffered infinitely (think more than a googolplex) for you. He described what He did for you and me in these words: “Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men” (Doctrine and Covenants 19:18-19). According to Amulek this was “an infinite and eternal sacrifice,” and the Savior made it for you and me so that we could overcome sin and death and one day have a resurrected, purified body like His (Alma 34:10). So, remember always that you were indeed “bought with a price” by the Savior and that you should care for your body like we would watch over a sacred temple.

                I hope that as you get older you will always keep the temple in your sights and make the goal to one day be able to go in and eventually be married there. It is the place that God has designed for us to unite families together, and if we keep our lives clean and pure and follow His commandments, we can be sealed there for all eternity. Because Mom and I were married in the temple, you are born in the covenant and sealed to us forever. We will always be a family and whether you like it or not, you are stuck with me as your Dad for a very long time! Another temple that we are anxiously awaiting to be finished is the Salt Lake Temple. It is being renovated as we can see whenever we go to Salt Lake City, and it will be completed in about 2026. That seems like a long time away, but it is small compared to the forty years that it originally took to build the temple! It stands as a monument to the faith of the pioneers. When the Saints first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, “President Brigham Young struck the ground with his walking stick and proclaimed, ‘Here we will build the temple of our God.’” And that’s exactly what they did, proving their faith in the restoration of the gospel and the power of our covenants with Jesus Christ through their deeds. I look forward to the day that we can likewise show our faith in the gospel as we perform baptisms for our ancestors there. Let us always live worthy—treating our bodies as temples so that the Holy Ghost can be with us—so that we can be in His holy house.  

Love,

Dad