Imagine you are very poor and for all your hard physical labor have just enough money to pay for the necessities of life. A humble home, bread, minimal clothes.
Now in that circumstance you are given gold coins worth $5,000,000 and told you can’t do anything with them but hold onto them for a year, protect them from people who are going to try to steal them from you, and then you need to return all of them in perfect condition.
Also, you aren’t going to be paid or compensated in any way. In fact having them will bring a lot of trouble and challenges.
How tempting would it be to use them (at least a few!) for your personal benefit? There probably aren’t very many people that have the integrity and self discipline to stay true.
Joseph Smith though was someone that did. He was in custody of ancient writings on metal plates made of pure gold. Purely based on the value of the gold alone they must have been worth millions in his day. Based on the fact they were thousands of years old as a collectors item they must have been worth quite a bit as well.
Yet he was tasked with protecting them and received no financial compensation. He was dirt poor yet he never did anything with them but stayed true to what he was entrusted with. That accomplishment is worthy of our respect!
No comments:
Post a Comment