The Weightier Matters
Elder Paul H. Dunn


 
My father used to teach us that life is a journey, not a camp, and he indicated that too many people are camping. I'd like to challenge all of us, particularly the young people and young couples that are married, to see life as a journey.
I remember a grandmother who had been widowed early in her life and was moving out of her home. Her granddaughter, about to be married herself, was carefully helping her pack the boxes of dishes and the faded towels. "See that sewing machine over there in the corner?" the grandmother asked. "Your grandfather always left his hat over there when he came home in the evening. I used to scold him all the time about it, 'Just put your hat on the hook,' I'd say. 'Why does your hat always have to be on the sewing machine messing everything up?' Then one day he got pneumonia and died, leaving four little children and me to miss him for a lifetime. How many times through the years I've thought, what I'd give to see that hat on the sewing machine, placed there by his own hand!"
Like the grandmother in this story, too often we let rifles cloud our vision. We get caught up in non-essentials or in a multitude of meetings, both in and out of the Church, that have no particular meaning or purpose. We sometimes nag the people we love the most over little inattentions, small faults, mere nothings in the whole scheme of things. Instead of treasuring the all-too-rare moments we share with our dear ones, we pick at faults, imagined or otherwise. How many of us say to our children: "Why can't you do this?" "Why don't you do that?" Or "Someday when I have the time."

(Elder Paul H. Dunn, Ensign, Nov. 1977, pp. 24-25)


Matthew

New Testament