I want to be a temple worker. I have some temple-worker friends, and they love their time in the temple. They say that they gain so much understanding. They say they bring the Spirit home every week. They say they find so much peace in the House of the Lord. I wanted that for me.
So I told my bishop and he started the paperwork. I went in and a member of the Stake Presidency interviewed me, and mailed my papers in. Then I got a letter in the mail with a number I should call to make an appointment. So I did! And then I got an appointment and I went in there and I waited outside the temple presidents office and then he invited me in. He asked me to tell him about myself. As soon as “I have a four-month-old daughter” escaped my lips, the whole process screeched to a halt. His face revealed conflicting feelings and I could see him forming an apology.
The First Presidency has given counsel that mothers of young children should not be temple workers. I have a young child, so I was not given a shift or a name tag or a tour. Instead, I was given a compassionate goodbye.
What the heck, right?
Wrong.
All moms are temple workers! I don’t have to be a temple worker to work in the House of the Lord.
From the Bible Dictionary:
Temple: A temple is literally a house of the Lord…. A place where the Lord may come, it is the most holy of any place of worship on the earth. Only the home can compare with the temple in sacredness.
Hmm.
Temple workers keep things clean. They cook meals. They do laundry. They clean floors. They dust. They wash windows. They give the people what they need. They guide them. They smile at people. They enable the people to feel the Spirit. They help them take the steps toward exaltation.
Are we still talking about temple workers?
And in Doctrine and Covenants 109, I’m confused again, whether we are talking about the home or the temple:
Thanks be to thy name, O Lord God of Israel…. Thou who has commanded thy servants to build a house to thy name in this place… And now we ask thee… to accept of this house…. that the Son of Man might have a place to manifest himself to his people…
And as thou hast said in a revelation…
And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wosdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith; Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing, and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of flory, a house of order, a house of God.
Accept the house that it may be
sanctified and consecrated to by holy, and that thy holy presence may be continually in this house; And that all people who shall enter upon the threshold of the Lord’s house may feel thy power, and feel constrained to acknowledge that thou has sanctified it…
And do thou grant, Holy Father,
that all those who shall worship in this house may be taught words of wosdom out of the best books, and that they may seek learning even by study, and also by faith, as thou has said; and that they may grow up in thee, and receive a fulness of the Holy Ghost, and be organized according to thy laws, and be prepared to obtain every needful thing
And we ask thee, Holy Father,
that thy servants may go forth from this house armed with thy power, and that thy name may be upon them, and thy flory be round about them, and thine angels have charge over them, and from this place they may bear exceedingly great and glorious tidings, in truth, until the ends of the earth.
How do we make our house like this one? You know this answer. You create the environment where the Spirit be. Put pictures of Christ and temples on your wall. Remove inappropriate media. Play uplifting music. Keep your house clean and in order. Have a good attitude. Help the people of the house feel comfortable there. Read scriptures and pray together every day. (New stuff? No.)