Today is the Time

My thoughts on Elder Gonzales' talk "Today is the Time"

He asks a question that I thought he gave the wrong answer to. “What motivated these leaders to go out and help others, even to the risking of their own lives? OK, it wasn’t a wrong answer just a different answer. I think that the most correct answer should be, “love.” Maybe it is because I’m a woman, but it isn’t duty that makes me go to the side of a sister when her mother dies, or call to make sure my visiting teaching sisters are OK after a storm in my area. No, it is because I love them.

We recently had a huge storm that dumped tons of water on our state in the matter of minutes. What made the people from our stake and other spend a Saturday working in the worst hit areas. Especially a Saturday before Christmas! It was love for God’s children. Plain and simple! I’m sure the members of the priesthood quorums, presidencies and other church leaders went down their check lists to make sure their members were safe. It was their calling that they accepted and as anyone knows who has either been in a leadership position or had a loved one in such a position, your love for those you serve makes doing the duty second nature.

Ok, he is correct when he says, “Gospel principles engraved in their lives” and that principle is “love one another.”

He talks about preparedness. In our stake we have a day set aside where we pretend something has gone wrong and we go through the motions of that emergency. We have had earthquakes, snow storms, avian flu outbreaks and we have had real drills when the power went out for 6-10 days. I find it interesting that we have these drills in September just before our winter weather. It is a chance for us to prepare so that when such emergencies happen we are prepared.

As with physically being prepared we also need to be spiritually prepared for those emergencies. Just as we walked through what we needed to do in our mock emergencies, we need to walk through what will happen when we come upon spiritual emergencies. Just as we gather food, supplies, blankets, flashlights, fuel, etc for the physical emergencies, we need to gather and prepare for the spiritual emergencies by doing the simple things: scripture study, prayer, temple worship, Sunday meetings, etc.

This is a principle that needs not only be taught through lessons, but also through modeling. Just recently my oldest son happened upon my blogs (I have five) and my list of articles I have written for LDS NHA. He was shocked at how much writing I have done and how much I do. I guess I hadn’t done a great job in modeling the behavior of writing.

Two weeks ago I took my van into the garage because the check engine light came on. While we were waiting we were looking at cars (he is 16 need I say more?). He desperately wanted to have a conversation with the car salesman about how much it would cost to buy a car. It took him about 45 minutes of walking around before he came to me and said, “Mom, I just don’t know what to say.” It hit me, that he had never had this modeled for him and therefore he didn’t know what to do. What a great life lesson I had the chance to teach him that day.

If we do not model spiritual behaviors how will our children know how to act when they are put in a position where they need to move and act. As Elder Gonzalez says, “today is the time” to teach our children through our actions, words and lessons.

We can not take it for granted that our children will learn just because we told them. We need to model good righteous behavior.

This reminds me of an article I read many moons ago about a doctor who came from the “projects.” He and his brother came from very humble beginnings. Their mother worked long hard hours and sacrificed much. If I have the story right she was a very young single mother. Her sons recall with fondness how when they were in the street playing their mother was on the front porch reading. She was reading such books as Shakespeare, Homer and other “hard books.” One day, long after the brothers were in medical school, they gave their mother a collection of leather bound books for Christmas. She broke into tears. The boys thought that was because she loved the books so much. No, she told them. It was because she didn’t know how to read. She had been modeling the behavior so her boys would think she knew how to read. She had been fooling them the whole time just so they would have a better chance in life. She had a neighbor help her read their letters and anything else that she needed. Her boys sat down and started to teach her to read. Then end of the story was that she had just finished the last book in the collection.

I often think about that mother when I model a good behavior that I don’t necessarily like to do. I think of the example I’m setting for my children.