The Parable of the Key

Tonight, Ruth and I were blessed to meet and hear a wonderful fireside on temples by S. Michael Wilcox. He gave a parable to explain temple work. I feel inspired to share it. If you have read it in one of his books, I hope you will still enjoy ( and it will be paraphrased as closely as I can remember it):


Once there was a man and a woman. One day, they cleaned up, put their best clothes on, and went to Jesus' House. He was very happy to see them! Jesus gave them a gift for coming to His house - a golden key. He told them that the key would allow them to come back and visit His house whenever and as often as they wanted to.

And they did, they came back time and again to feel the peace and joy of being in the presence of Jesus in His Holy House.

One day, Jesus welcomed them to the house and said, "Come, follow me, and I will show you something wonderful." They went into a beautiful garden inside where there was HUGE, marvelous house. The man and woman were in awe. They had never seen such a wonderful house in their lives!

"Who lives here?" they asked.

"This is your house." replied the Savior, "In my Father's House are many mansions. This one is yours. And the key I gave you on your first visit will help you gain admittance to your mansion."

The man and woman were overjoyed, and rushed up the steps of the mansion readying their key to open the door. If the outside was this magnificent, what must the inside be like?

However, to their surprise, when they reached the door, it was virtually covered with locks. They tried their key in several of the locks before they found one that it fit. Expectantly, they turned the key, but it would not open the door.

Disappointed, they returned to Jesus, and said, "The door is covered in locks, and we only have the key to one!"

The Savior smiled, and said, "Did you think you would be happy living there by yourselves? Think of who you would most like to live with you there, and bring them to my house, so I can give them keys to that door."

The man and woman rushed off, finding their children, brothers and sisters, both sets of in-laws, and aunts and uncles...even Uncle Fred, bringing them to Jesus' House, where they all received their own golden key. The man and woman and their family went to the door of the mansion, and although there were certainly more keys fitting more locks, there were literally THOUSANDS of locks on the door, and since it did not budge with the keys present, it was obvious they needed more keys.

They returned to Jesus, who said "I see you have found your mothers and fathers, and children, but what about their spouses...did your mother not have a mother, and she a mother and so on? Bring them all to Me, so I can give them keys. They will want to live there, too!"

So they scoured records, they found mothers and fathers of mothers and fathers, and all the children they had had. They brought them to Jesus' House, and each and every one got their own golden key, just like the one the man and woman received their first time at Jesus House. And when they found them all, and they each had their key, they returned to mangificent mansion, each fitting his or her key to their lock in the door. However, there was still one lock that had no key.

As a group, they returned to Jesus, and sadly cried, "We have found all the family, but there remains one lock we do not have a key for!"

Jesus smiled, and said "Did you think you would be happy living there without your Elder Brother? I am a member of the Family, too. Let's try it together."

When they returned to the mansion, they all turned their keys until at last, Jesus turned the biggest key in the biggest lock, and door opened!

The man, the woman, all their relatives went inside with their Elder Brother. And they all lived happily forever after.


Simple? Yes. But so is the gospel. May we continue to find our brothers and sisters who still need their keys. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Utah is not how they paint it.

We we warned when we came out here all about those Aloof Distant Clannish UTAH Mormons. We were told that there was this HUGE waiting list to work at the Salt Lake Temple. Bishops have so many members in their ward that they have to make up callings.....

NOT!

I flew to Utah to work from the new office for a week and take some time to find a place to live out here. I found this place on a mountainside just south of the 215 loop, on a bench that overlooks the valley. It was determined that this place was part of the Brighton 3rd Ward, Salt Lake City Brighton Stake....I was concerned that there would be no one there to help me move in.

Turns out I had an ICD implanted just a week prior to my drive across the plains...so with one arm in a sling, I could drive, but not toss boxes around. I had called and talked to one of the bishop's counselors a couple of weeks before..There were 15 High Priests there to unpack the truck. I was impressed. Each of them had a handshake and a smile for me. Its been like coming home.

They have welcomed us with open arms.

We live at the South end of the Salt Lake Temple district, and we knew that our friends, Mike and Barbara Barker worked there on Tuesday Night, so we attended a session on a Tuesday evening, when they were scheduled. I found out at least part of why Heavenly Father wanted us here.

In the prayer that is part of the endowment session, the brother was pleading with the Lord for Ordinance Workers, particularly MALE Ordinance workers. This time I did not need a hammer over the head....I just said...YES, Father...got it..and went and got the paperwork to have our local priesthood leaders submit for the calling.

When we went to visit our bishop, he extended a calling for us to work with the 30 plus singles in the ward...another cherished illusion down the drain. Its a big stake initiative, not a made up calling.

With Ruth's arthritic hips and knees, working in the temple is a challenge for her. I am having the time of my life. I fancied myself an actor at one point in my life, and actually made a little (well, very little) money as an actor before doing radio. I believe I have found a series of roles that are not just roles of a lifetime, but of an eternity. I qualifed for a very minor part my last week of work, and was told that I would be presenting (we don't act or perform in the temple, we teach) that role on Saturday Afternoons for the month of October.

What a great blessing to be able to finally give a return on a talent that He gave me! I feel unworthy, but am grateful for the experience.

What a year, so far!

Whew! What a 10 months it has been. In the words of one of my heroes, Inigo Montoya, let me review, no it is too much. Let me sum up.

After getting off to a busy start on the blog...life got weird. Politically, things were not really to my liking, but at the time, not a whole lot to do about it. Personally, being back at the temple was wonderful, and my job was going along just fine...Little did I know what Heavenly Father had in store.

Having been invited to come meet with the High Priests as of my 50th birthday, my bishop called me in and interviewed me for advancement from Elder to High Priest. It was kind of funny, I did not hear another thing for months, and figured someone had come to their senses and had stopped the process. (Turns out some one lost the paperwork!)

Meanwhile on the job, while my team was not getting cut, there seemed to be a high attrition rate and they were not being replaced...meaning, cutbacks. I went to the annual IT Department off-site in Overland Park Kansas having the occasional thought out of nowhere of what it might be like to go work at our new division's headquarters.

As part of that off-site meeting, it was decided that the company would put a member of the support team on site at the divisional headquarters in Salt Lake City. Well, I had taken vacation for the rest of the week, so we were visiting with friends in Kansas City and they made the decision seem easy...I did not want to become one of those Utah Mormons, did I? HECK NO!!!

Meanwhile we went back to St. Louis, and I had to renew my temple recommend, but for some reason, the Stake President (from our ward) wanted to do the interview. At the end of the question and answer period, he leaned back and asked if Bishop Blair had talked with me about becoming a High Priest. I told him he had, but I figured that somewhere along the way the process had gotten bogged down. A couple of phone calls later, the paperwork was found, he clapped me on the shoulder and said that interview would be the same questions anyway, and we would call that good. They would sustain me at Stake Conference, and we could arrange for the ordination anytime after that.

At the Saturday Evening Session of Stake Conference, Ruth and I sat next to the stake patriarch and his bride. We got to talking about job opportunities. He said he had advised a son in a situation somewhat similar to mine, the it was not wise for older workers to refuse transfers, and make himself less valuable to his company. The Holy Ghost nearly hit me over the head to get me to listen. Turns out that patriarch is the New St. Louis Temple President as of November 1st. :)

But but but I HAD a plan...Ruth and I would continue to live and work in St. Louis until the Kansas City Temple was ready for dedication...uhhhhhhh...no.

Turns out that my best bud in whole wide world, Phil Beem would be coming from Independence to St. Louis on the Tuesday after conference, he would be available to do the ordination (he is bishop of Independence First Ward). He and his sweetie came to our house on the Monday Night, and we went over and attended the temple together the next day. Phil and I did two sessions. Without going into sacred detail, I left the temple that day knowing that the Lord wanted me in Salt Lake City. Just what He needed...another Mormon in the valley.

I talked to my boss, and he was floored that I would consider it, but saw the advantages to having a veteran take the position as opposed to hiring a local and attempting to train remotely. The deal was struck...we would review the situation in a couple of years to see whether I could come back to KC....you know, pretty much in time for the temple dedication? (Still have to see on that one)

With the wonderful assistance of the Chesterfield First Ward, the apartment was somehow packed into a truck and I drove across the plains the last week of May, and moved into our apartment in Cottonwood Heights, Utah on May 30th. I started work at my new location on the first.

Life and the Lord have a funny way of changing our plans.

New Attitude

Yesterday was a big day for me. For the first time since my open heart surgery in August, I resumed my duties as an ordinance worker at the St. Louis Missouri Temple. It was truly a joy to be back at work in the Lord's House, amongst his willing and worthy children. 

Being a longstanding worker, and having held assignments of responsibility there, the first thing my shift coordinators had me doing was "shadowing" a brother officiating for the first time in an endowment session, to be there to monitor and assist should he have questions or issues. During the session an issue arose that I needed to have a couple of the patrons in the session step out of the room with me to have something adjusted that was better to deal with outside of the view of the rest of the company. We always seek to avoid embarrasing our patrons whenever possible, but in this case the problem needed to be addressed and both brothers needed to make the adjustment, which would mean changing a piece of clothing. 

The brothers were most amenable when the issue was explained, we had a little light moment about it. They both made the adjustment and we returned to the company. 

As I thought about the incident later, it occurred to me that we all (well, most of us) find it easier to be corrected in the temple, and for my part, I find it much more pleasant to assist others with their issues there. I naturally make the assumption that they are doing their best. It makes it almost a joy to assist them in improving their performance. 

Then I got that spiritual slug...you know, where the Holy Ghost slaps your spirit and gives you a spiritual insight about your personal performance.  In this case it was "So why is it you do not carry this assumption about others with you when you leave the temple?" Wow. Talk about your basic spiritual undressing. I stood there naked. I have no defense. With few exceptions, the Great Exemplar made this assumption with those of His brothers and sister with whom he interacted while on the planet. Why can't I? 

So here is my New Year's challenge...to bring that assumption and the love and attitude that comes with it to my everyday life. To assume that family, friends and the folks who call me with their computer issues all are doing the best they can, and deserve my loving assistance with their issues.  Its WJWD....what Jesus would do. 

Home really is where the heart is.

Columnist Salena Zito learns an important lesson about 'home."

http://townhall.com/columnists/SalenaZito/2008/12/21/almost_home

Christmas Babies

In the December 2007 Ensign Magazine, LDS Church President Gordon Hinckley quoted E. T. Sullivan, who once wrote these interesting words: “When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusual way. He doesn’t stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts. Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home and of some obscure mother. And then God puts the idea into the mother’s heart, and she puts it into the baby’s mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts. The greatest forces in the world are babies.”

I love this time of year. In the dead of winter we commemorate the births of two of the greatest babies in the history of mankind. Long ago and far, far away on Judea’s Plain, a virgin named Mary gave birth to a lad who would provide a way back to God for all of his Sprit Brothers and Sisters. She named him according to what she had been instructed by heavenly messengers – Yeshua – translated meaning “Jehovah Saves.” He is better known by its Greek rendering, Jesus.

 Thanks to need of the early Christian Church to replace ancient pagan revelries surrounding the Winter Solstice, a December day was chosen to celebrate the birth of the Savior of the World. Over the next 1800 some odd years, many such pragmatic choices made changes to truths and ordinances of the Christ’s Church.  Lack of bodies of water sufficient to submerge a human adult in the Saharan Africa indicated a change to sprinkling as opposed to immersion for baptism. A common view of the Godhead was required to push the new church forward politically – so a group of men at a Council in Nicaea compromised to say that Father, Son and Holy Ghost were really one being, capable of appearing separate in some mysterious way. The created a creed that became the confession of many, and a litmus test for those who take it upon themselves to determine who is worthy to call themselves a Christian.  At nearly the same time, the Church fathers decided that Baptism for the Dead as taught by the Original Apostles was “A useless tradition of Paul, and of no efficacy.”

Such drift continued in the centuries following the death of the Apostles. And as new opinions were developed on doctrinal matters, new entities claiming to be the Church of Jesus Christ appeared. Each of these was missing critical components, not least of which was actual authority to perform ordinances in the name of God, also known as the priesthood. In 1805, the wheels began turning to correct these deficiencies. On a winters morning, near to the Christian Holiday, thousands of years and miles away from that manger in Bethlehem, another boy was born that would change the world and prepare this tired old planet and its inhabitants to once again and truly “Receive her King.” 

His name, like his father’s, was Joseph – which translated from Hebrew means “he shall add.” And add he did, or rather, reveal that which had been hidden for centuries. His contributions have lit the way Home for millions who have heard his words. 

December is a blessed month. One in which we celebrate the birth of Our Messiah, and remember the birth of His Prophet. I thank God for both! 

The Real Meaning of Christmas

Last weekend, my wife and I went over to Kansas City so I could attend my employer's Holiday Party. On my way to the luncheon, it was a clear and bright day. The trip from Independence where we were staying and Overland Park, where the party was reminded me of how thankful I am to have a job that permits me to commute from one bedroom to the other to get to work.

I also got another, far more signifcant reminder. As I traveled south on Metcalf Avenue in OP, there is a cemetery just south of College. As I drove past, I saw three people gathered at a grave, their arms around one another, looking at the headstone.

As I considered their grief, the Spirit whispered to me, "This is the true meaning of the event you are headed to celebrate."

Death is not the end. Because of the Baby whose birth we are celebrating at this time of year, and the sacrifice on our behalf that He performed...death is a new beginning. We can indeed have our loved ones back in the worlds to come.

Gloria In Excelsis Deo! Come let us adore him, yet again. The first and greatest Christmas present of all. Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the World, and the Best Friend Forever of all of us.
How I love Him!