Church Talks
THE CELESTIALIZING VALUE OF HARD WORK
[Talk by John E. Enslen to the Wetumpka congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on January 9, 2022.]
The Come Follow Me program has substantially elevated the practice of regular, in-home scripture study amongst Latter-day Saints, hopefully to a degree which, at least collectively, exceeds prior generations. Through the years, my own personal scripture-study experiences have repeatedly taught me this one lesson: Pondering the scriptures is an impossible task if I am reading only from a sense of duty, or reading under time pressures self-imposed by my submission to external forces. Only when I am unrushed and ask God the questions which come to mind as I slowly read and reread, am I able to find myself intensely engaged in a very exciting adventure of discovery; I find hidden treasures, and I solve personal mysteries.
I am grateful for an assignment to speak from this past week’s Come Follow Me reading material which included Genesis Chapter 2. I would like for us to ponder together two short verses from the reading assignment. These two verses bear on a seldom discussed gospel principle. I have titled my remarks “The Celestializing Value of Hard Work.”
By the time we arrive at the early part of Chapter 2 in Genesis, we have learned that God is a supreme, expert, creative worker who timely “rested from all his work which he had made.” (Genesis 2:2) Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are the ultimate masters in the sciences and arts of both production and non-wasteful conservation. We are commanded to be like them. (See Matthew 5:48; 3 Nephi 27:27)
We will learn this coming week in the third chapter of Genesis that we are to produce and eat our bread by the “sweat of [our] face[s].” (See Genesis 3:19)
In later post-Adam generations, the Lord will do a reset with his covenant people, reducing the requirements of an obedient life to ten basic commandments, mostly composed of “shall-nots.” One of those commandments contains the following traditionally deemphasized, if not ignored or forgotten, affirmative mandate, which amazingly was allotted by ancient scholars a full verse unto itself: “Six days shalt thou labor….” (Exodus 20:9)
Christ never ceases “working” at bringing to pass our immortality and eternal life. (See Moses 1:39)
In the meridian of time, Jesus declared: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” (John 5:17) “I must work the works of him that sent me.” (John 9:4)
It is by our works that you and I are known (Matthew 7:20), and wherever we go, our works follow us. (Revelation 14:13) Our personal labors will create the body of works by which we will be finally judged. (Revelation 20:12-13) God does not divide our works between temporal and ecclesiastical, for all things are spiritual unto God, and he declared that principle specifically with respect to Adam by name, as well as all of his posterity. (See D&C 29:34)
In this dispensation of the restoration, the Lord has stated: “Now, I, the Lord, am not well pleased with the inhabitants of Zion, for there are idlers among them.” (D&C 68:31) “And the idler shall not have place in the Church, except he repent and mend his ways.” (D&C 75:29)
Several things are necessary for a healthy self-esteem, and performing meaningful work is certainly one of them.
A latter-day prophet, President David O. McKay, taught: “Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that the power to work is a blessing, that the love of work is success.” (Pathways to Happiness [1957], 381)
With that backdrop, let’s now consider the two short verses from the reading assignment, Genesis 2:5 and Genesis 2:15.
After the work of original creation had ended (Genesis 2: 2), and that work had been refined and augmented by the addition of four river systems leading from a single river source, and after the placement of precious metals in the earth (Genesis 2:10-14), and after his work of “planting” a garden had been completed (Genesis 2:8), we read this: “[T]here was not a man to till the ground.” (Genesis 2:5; see also Genesis 3:23)
Wow! Did you hear that thunderous proclamation? For the first time ever, God has given an essential identifying characteristic to a mortal being. He has described a major purpose of man. From an endless list of descriptions of what a human being is and what he does, God has chosen one and caused his pronouncement to be eternally recorded.
From all of the various identities that God could have selected to describe mortal man, God chose to first identify him as one who “tills the ground,” (Genesis 2:5) thus placing an emphasis on man’s role as a physical laborer and a caretaker of the soil, who is personally and individually responsible for providing his own food.
Here are three descriptive things God did not say: (1) There was not a man to accumulate resources. (2) There was not a man to achieve fame. (3) There was not a man to engage in self-entertainment.
Then we read this in verse 15: ”And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” (Genesis 2:15)
Wow! Are we dull of hearing, or do we have ears to hear that astounding declaration? (See Acts 28:27; Matthew 11:15) Notice that God’s very first commandment to the very first mortal dealt directly with physical labor—to “dress and keep” his place of habitation and its surroundings. Although God is a God who appreciates outward beauty and order, He is most concerned with his children. Was not His primary motivation behind this earliest of all commandments to teach the beneficial importance of work and to reveal to mankind that God does not separate the blessing of agency from responsibility?
Here are a couple of things that the Lord did not say: (1) And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden and said: Go have a frolicking good time. (2) Nor did he say, Go make war over the natural resources.
Are we getting the bigger picture? Work is not simply a temporal law that provides for our necessities. Rather, work is a sacred law designed for the eternal salvation of our souls. There is a divinely imposed inseparable connection between perspiration, inspiration, and exaltation. It takes work to “go about doing good.” (Acts 10:38)
In the April 1975 General Conference of the Church, members from all over the world gathered to the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City to hear the revelatory words of a living prophet, at that time President Spencer W. Kimball, who gave an address titled Why Call Ye Me Lord, Lord and Do Not the Things That I Say?. Some members returned to their homes disappointed because his core message consisted of simply this:
“We [previously] called attention to the fact that the Lord had created for us this beautiful world and gave command to our father Adam to till the ground and to dress the land and to make it habitable. That command continues to us.
We recommend to all people that there be no undue pollution, that the land be taken care of and kept clean to be productive and to be beautiful.
*** We are concerned when we see numerous front and side and back yards that have gone to weeds, where ditch banks are cluttered and trash and refuse accumulate. It grieves us when we see broken fences, falling barns, leaning and unpainted sheds, hanging gates, and unpainted property. And we ask our people again to take stock of their own dwellings and properties.”
Continuing, President Kimball added:
“There is a story that President Brigham Young, having urged the people of certain communities to properly dress and clean their premises, refused to go back to them to preach to them, saying something like this: ‘You didn’t listen to me when I urged you to fix up your premises. The same doors are off their hinges; the same barns are still unpainted; the same fences are partly fallen.’”
It is no accident or coincidence that throughout human history mankind’s physical labors and employment have consumed the greater portion of his waking hours in mortality. The perfect situation is to have a natural love for what we do, but most of us are part of the overwhelming majority who are not naturally loving what we do. But we should not give up on finding joy in our work. In the end, the only dividing factor between whether we count our work as joy or drudgery is our own attitude.
All honest work is honorable and provides a valuable service to mankind. God has given us the capacity to learn to love and enjoy our work. We can find abundant joy in the manner in which we perform that which we do, whatever it is. If we perform our labors with a high degree of excellence, whether it be delivering pizzas, delivering medical services, or delivering appellate briefs, the joy will come.
I feel totally confident in promising to you that which has occurred in my own life: If we will labor hard, consistently and with quality, do more than is expected or required of us, treat others with kindness and fairness, we will experience joy. Moreover, we will also experience amazing, unimaginable, good things happening to us. A man or woman who is willing to work and labor with excellence, and with genuine appreciation for the opportunity to work, is becoming the rarest of individuals in our society. That man or woman will have opportunities to make themselves indispensable. They will rapidly elevate their employment or business status.
I want to share a true short story—a recent and relevant story, and the story has a direct connection to this congregation.
In the summer of 2019, Sister Sherena Rawls moved to Loudon County, Virginia, with her husband John, who took a new assignment with his employment. Sherena had an Alabama commercial driver’s license and limited experience driving a school bus. She applied for a bus driver’s position with the county school system. But in order to be approved, she had to undergo two months of training. This she did in July and August.
Upon completion of the training, she accepted a job as a substitute bus driver. She did a commendable job, and at the end of her first week she was selected to fill an opening as a fulltime driver with her own route. Again, she did an outstanding job, demonstrating competence and professionalism, and at the end of two weeks, she was selected to fill a vacancy that had occurred in a supervisory position—an assistant area supervisor. After six months of diligent work in that status, she received a promotion to the position of Area Supervisor where she managed 130 bus drivers and 30 other employees, who provided transportation services to three high schools, three middle schools, and twelve elementary schools. She retained that job until she and her family recently returned to Wetumpka in 2021.
I asked Sherena the reasons for her marvelous success. She attributed it to her work ethic and her love for the people around her.
I conclude with this: As I studied this week’s Come Follow Me lesson, I recalled a now long-ago incident that I have never forgotten. I was the first person baptized into the Church in Wetumpka, Alabama. I was age 26 and I was baptized in May of 1973. That month coincided with my later planting my very first vegetable garden. The garden spot was adjacent to our new home with which we had been recently blessed. Standing in the freshly, manually plowed dirt, with sweat on my brow, a feeling of inexpressible joy came over me—a new convert, as I privately told the Lord that I would be fully satisfied with an eternal destiny that assigned me to be a laborer in His personal garden. In retrospect, I think I was just beginning to learn some things about the gospel of Jesus Christ that I didn’t even know I was learning.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.