If you watch television you will see and hear this message
from a credit card company asking you this question. What’s in your wallet? I
could have titled this post “ Better than a credit card “.
Many years ago I encouraged the members of the Riverton
Wyoming Stake to have a current temple recommend. At that time the temple
recommends were renewed on a yearly basis and good for all the temples in the
world, now they are good for two years and in January we will renew ours.
I posed to the members this scenario: Suppose you heard that
Jesus Christ was going to be in the temple tomorrow. Would you be ready and
prepared to go to the temple the next day? In order to have a valid
temple recommend there needs to be three signatures on it. There has to be the
signature of the bishop, the stake president and the individual.
Now suppose
you don’t have a valid recommend. You were waiting to renew it in a month or
two when you planned to take some time off to go to the temple. You call the bishop
and he arranges to meet with you before he leaves for the temple. So far so
good.
Now you just need to get a member of the stake presidency to interview
you and sign the recommend. The second counselor lives in your neighborhood so
you call him, but he and his family have left to go to the temple. The second
counselor lives in another city and the road is closed. You call the stake
president and he is leaving in twenty minutes and you live thirty minutes away
and in order for him to go to the temple he must leave. You are unable to get
that signature that you need.
Now let me tell you a true experience.
There was a bishop in Germany who was going on a trip to
Israel. He would be spending time in Jerusalem. He looked in his wallet to see
if there were any items that he did not need. There were a number of items that
he felt that he would not need. He saw his temple recommend and reasoned that
there was no temple where he was going and if he had his pocket picked he did
not want to put his precious recommend at risk. As part of his itinerary
he wanted to visit the Jerusalem center. At that time there was a disturbance
in Jerusalem and security was tight. As he went to the Jerusalem center he met
an Israeli security guard. The guard asked him what he wanted to do. He replied
that he wanted to visit the center. The guard asked him if he were a member of
the church. He replied in the affirmative. The guard then asked him for his
temple recommend. The bishop was not able to present one to the guard and did not
get to visit the Jerusalem center.
The temple recommend is better than a credit card for
spiritual things.
Now grandpa asks you my grandchildren, what is in your
wallet?
