A number of years ago when I first joined my stake singles ward, I had a Relief Society Lesson that changed my life. I no longer recall all the details of the lesson, but there is one part that I will never forget.
The sister who was teaching Relief Society that Sunday, was a nurse. She works with babies, specifically premature ones. She told us that part of her responsibility was to visit the babies in their home after they were released from the hospital to give them checkups etc… Normally she enjoyed these checkups, but there was one home she always dreaded to go. It was a small home, and the only surface she could lay the baby upon to do the check up was a small coffee table in the front living room. Normally this wouldn’t bother her, except that the parents always had the TV on and what they were watching was not something she ever wanted stored in her mind.
For weeks she struggled to just keep her head down and focus on the baby to get through the checkup as fast as she could and then leave. Yet, no matter how hard she concentrated, she could not block out what was being shown just a foot away from her head. Her quiet humming could block out the noise, but somehow no matter how hard she tried there she would always leave with at least one more unwanted image ingrained in her mind.
Then one morning while studying The Book of Mormon, she came across a powerful verse of scripture:
“And they pitched their tents round about the temple, every man having his tent with the door thereof towards the temple, that thereby they might remain in their tents and hear the words which King Benjamin should speak unto them.” Mosiah 2:6
In her study that day my friend cross-referenced that scripture with this scripture,
“Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.” Genesis 13:12
What an amazing difference the direction of their tents made in the lives of these two people. The first people pitched their tents toward the Temple of God, and the Lord’s Prophet and they were greatly blessed because of it in so many ways. However, Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom, and the world, and in the end he lost everything including his wife.
After reading these two scriptures, my friend made a decision in how to handle this difficult circumstance. The next time she went to do the checkup, instead of just bending her head, she repositioned herself so that her back was to the TV all together. She said that this made all the difference in the world.
At this point she told us that we all have a choice to make. It was up to us to decide which direction we were going to pitch our tents in our lives. She reminded us that right now, in our single lives, we have the most freedom to rearrange the direction of our tents if needed. Later on when we have more permanently established our lives with our spouse and children it will be much more difficult to do so.
