What’s in your wallet?

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?