Labor Diligently

I was reminded this morning as I read part of the allegory of the olive tree found in Jacob 5 that the Lord and His servant in this story labored tirelessly for the good of the trees of the vineyard. A form of the word labor itself appears twelve times in the chapter, and we see it especially in the final 20 or so verses. In His final attempt to save the vineyard the Lord said, “Wherefore, go to, and call servants, that we may labor diligently with our might in the vineyard, that we may prepare the way…. Wherefore, let us go to and labor with our might this last time…. Go to, and labor in the vineyard, with your might. For behold, this is the last time that I shall nourish my vineyard; for the end is nigh at hand, and the season speedily cometh; and if ye labor with your might with me ye shall have joy in the fruit which I shall lay up unto myself.” In the allegory that is exactly what the servants did: “And it came to pass that the servants did go and labor with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard labored also with them;… And thus they labored, with all diligence, according to the commandments of the Lord of the vineyard.” Because of their diligent labor, the Lord said this: “And blessed art thou; for because ye have been diligent in laboring with me in my vineyard, and have kept my commandments, and have brought unto me again the natural fruit” (v61-75). The message is that the work of the Lord is just that: work. It takes diligent labor to bring salvation to ourselves, our families, and to all of those in the Lord’s vineyard across the world. We must figuratively prune and dig and dung and nourish as we persist in trying the live and share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

               It is interesting that in the middle of this account of the Lord’s and His servant’s efforts to save the vineyard, He contemplated giving up early. We read, “And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard said unto the servant: Let us go to and hew down the trees of the vineyard and cast them into the fire, that they shall not cumber the ground of my vineyard, for I have done all. What could I have done more for my vineyard?” (v49) Perhaps it was a test of the servant to see how he would respond to this, for surely the Lord will not give up on us while there is still any hope. The servant understood that there was more work to be done: “Spare it a little longer.” The Lord agreed, “Yea, I will spare it a little longer, for it grieveth me that I should lose the trees of my vineyard” (v49-51). Sometimes perhaps we too want to figuratively throw in the spade and pruning instruments and give up trying to help ourselves or others in living the gospel. We might say, “I have done all. What more could I have done?” But in those moments, we must resist the urge to give in and instead persevere in living the gospel, teaching our children, keeping our covenants, and bearing witness of His name.

I love the way that President Holland encouraged us in his classic talk However Long and Hard the Road as he referred to the beginning days of WWII in England: “On 10 May 1940, as the specter of Nazi infamy moved relentlessly toward the English Channel, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was summoned to the post of prime minister of England. He hastily formed a government and on May 13 went before the House of Commons with his maiden speech. “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.’ We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all our strength that God can give us. . . .That is our policy. You ask, What is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be.” President Holland also quoted these words from Winston Churchill from around that same time: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” He then told how at the end of his mission to England, only 22 years after those words had been spoken, he stood on “the famous white cliffs of Dover overlooking the English Channel” and worried about his own future and the challenges that lay before him. As he stood there, he read again these inspiring words of Winston Churchill and thought, “Blood? Toil? Tears? Sweat? Well, I figured I had as much of those as anyone, so I headed home to try.” All of us need that kind of perseverance in the face of the difficulties that we encounter. However long and hard the road before us, we must hold fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ and never give up on doing the work He has set before us.