On the sweetness of Mormon life.

At the Sunday morning session of the October 1971 General Conference session, Brother Kimball did not give the usual sermon. Instead, he told a frame story and several scenes of the sweetness of Mormon life. He called them “glimpses of heaven.” Mormon doctrine being what it is, the description is not metaphorical. There are important senses in which he meant it literally. They all touched me, particularly the couple marrying off their last and eighth child and the Japanese missionary. But the one that touched me most was the one that hit closest to my home, literally (though I am not a Stake President, Deo gratias).

Once we were in a distant stake for conference. We came to the unpretentious home of the stake president at mid-day Saturday. We knocked at the door, and it was opened by a sweet mother with a child in her arms. She was the type of mother who did not know there were maids and servants. She was not an artist’s model, nor a society woman. Her hair was dressed neatly; her clothes were modest, tastefully selected; her face was smiling; and though young, she showed the rare combination of maturity of experience and the joys of purposeful living.

“The house was small. The all-purpose room into which we were welcomed was crowded and in its center were a long table and many chairs. We freshened up in the small bedroom assigned to us, made available by ‘farming out’ to the neighbors some of the children, and we returned to this living room. She had been very busy in the kitchen. Her husband, the stake president, soon returned from his day’s labors and made us welcome and proudly introduced us to all of the children as they returned from their chores and play.

“Almost like magic the supper was ready, for ‘many hands make light work,’ and these numerous hands were deft and experienced ones. Every child gave evidence of having been taught responsibility. Each had certain duties. One child had quickly spread a tablecloth; another placed the knives and forks and spoons; and another covered them with the large plates turned upside down. (The dishes were inexpensive.) Next came large pitchers of creamy milk, high piles of sliced homemade bread, a bowl at each place, a dish of fruit from storage, and a plate of cheese.

“One child placed the chairs with backs to the table, and without confusion, we all knelt at the chairs facing the table. One young son was called on to lead in family prayer. It was extemporaneous, and he pleaded with the Lord to bless the family and their schoolwork, and the missionaries, and the bishop. He prayed for us who had come to hold conference that we would ‘preach good,’ for his father in his church responsibilities, for all the children that ‘they would be good, and kind to each other,’ and for the little cold shivering lambs being born in the lambing sheds on the hill this wintry night.

“A very Little one said the blessing on the food, and thirteen plates were turned up and thirteen bowls filled, and supper proceeded. No apologies were offered for the meal, the home, the children, or the general situation. The conversation was constructive and pleasant. The children were well-behaved. These parents met every situation with calm dignity and poise.

“In these days of limited families, or childless ones, when homes often have only one or two selfish and often pampered children, homes of luxury with servants, broken homes where life moves outside the home, it was most refreshing to sit with a large family where interdependence and love and harmony were visible and where children were growing up in unselfishness. So content and comfortable were we in the heart of this sweet simplicity and wholesomeness that we gave no thought to the unmatched chairs, the worn rug, the inexpensive curtains, the numbers of souls that were to occupy the few rooms available.”

I read this scene to my wife over the weekend. I could not read it to my children last night, because we were at our little cellist’s school concert, but I will read it to them tonight. It is the vision that our family has been, not always consciously, striving towards.

I recommend it as a valuable spiritual exercise to contemplate the way in which you and yours are glimpses of heaven. Find that vision and then work to make it more perfectly real.

Then pray about it too. You may be surprised, joyfully surprised, to find the ways in which God sees you as a glimpse of heaven.

The mismatched chairs in the scene I quote above is a figure of heaven.  We bring our differences to the celestial table–we are not matched chairs–but we are there in family unity, in the unity of the feast.

Other posts from the Sunday morning session of the October 1971 conference