Cleave

Elder Bruce D. Porter of the Seventy: "Personal prayer, study, and pondering are vital to building the kingdom within our own souls.  It is in quiet moments of contemplation and communion with the Almighty that we come to know and love Him as our Father" (in Conference Report, Mar.-Apr. 2001, 105).

Without any one of prayer, study, or pondering, our building efforts will lack in efficiency and effectiveness.  And no, I was not just redundant.  Efficiency and effectiveness are not the same thing.  To be efficient, you only have to do something quickly.  To be effective, you only have to do something correctly.  Illustrating my point, I recall a story about two sandwich artists at a popular sandwich joint.

One worker would make the sandwiches faster than anyone else--her speed was astounding--but customers frequently complained at the sloppiness of their sandwiches.  The second worker would make beautiful sandwiches, but he was consistently slow, even after working at the popular sandwich joint for several months.

Neither of these workers were both efficient and effective.  The first worker was certainly efficient, making many sandwiches in a day, but their quality was lacking, so she was not an effective worker.  The second worker, however, made good quality sandwiches, but he made them at such a slow pace that he couldn't serve the customers in an acceptable amount of time, so he was not efficient worker.

Heavenly Father needs workers who are both efficient and effective.  Although it is commendable to desire to spend all day praying, studying, and pondering, there are other things that need doing to build the Kingdom of God.  We need to spend our time wisely and build our souls efficiently so that we can do other things in service of the Lord.  But we should not be too hasty in building our souls, or we will not be effective.  What good is it to pray and read the scriptures if we don't take the time we need to really ponder what we have studied and prayed about?  We must be efficient, but we cannot afford to be so fast that we are not effective. I want to challenge whoever read this to ask yourself at the end of your studies to ponder on the things you have learned, to pray about them, and then to see if you have come to know and love your God as your Father who is in heaven.  If not, you might be able to get more out of this gospel than you are already getting.

Choose to Cleave.
*Read my first post, "Preface," for more information about Cleaving