Organize Yourselves

So my husband and I are on a cleaning and organizing kick. We've set a goal to have our home all organized and in order by tomorrow night. It'll be quite the task, hopefully we will reach our goal. We worked like crazy yesterday and our bedroom looks like a whole new room. It is amazing how much more relaxed you can feel in a room that is free of clutter and chaos.

It is so easy to become lazy and just add another item to a pile here and another item to a pile there. But soon, as we all know, the piles get quite big and the task to clean up becomes daunting when it could've taken only a few minutes to put a few dishes in the dishwasher, to hang up that coat, to match those last few pairs of socks, or to simply put the toothpaste back where it belongs.

As I was typing that last paragraph I started to recognize a parallel to how we live the gospel. It is easy to become lazy in the gospel. It is easy to add reading your scriptures to your pile of to-do-laters and it is easy to add a little mistake here and a little sin there. But it is not so easy to meet the daunting task of cleaning up that pile of mistakes or getting back on track at doing the everyday gospel essentials.

We not only need to make our homes an orderly, organized, and clean place to dwell but we need to make ourselves, our thoughts, and our actions clean and orderly.

I love this scripture from Doctrine and Covenants 88:119, "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 glory, a house of order, a house of God;"

I once had a seminary teacher who had us substitute the words woman or man in the place of house in this scripture. So first we can literally relate this to how we keep our house and the things we strive to do there. But then when we substitute these words this verse takes on a whole new meaning and it reads like this:

"Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a woman, even a woman of prayer, a woman of fasting, a woman of faith, a woman of learning, a woman of glory, a woman of order, a woman of God;"

I challenge us all to organize and prepare ourselves and our homes and I challenge us all to become better women and men of God.