This month’s issue of Desert Saints Magazine is on simplifying our lives and de-cluttering our priorities. While we’re at it, I think now is as good a time as any to prune right to the trunk of the tree. It is becoming clearer every day that all “things,” meaning external stuff, are expendable and could be gone at any time.

So I propose looking at the very essence of who we are. We are Father in Heaven’s children who are covenant members of His church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are on the earth in the final stages of preparation for the return of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The first sign of the Second Coming, by the way, was when God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove in 1820. The hour is now very late.

We were told in the October 2008 general conference by an apostle that we are witnessing the fall of Babylon and it is time now to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Lord and the establishment of Zion. (See Elder Todd D. Christofferson, “Come to Zion.” Many other messages echoed this same tone.)
I suggest using this key piece of information in evaluating your life, your priorities, your finances and your heart.

The time is now for us to repent, set our hearts and lives in order, seek the face of the Lord, and keep His commands, whether from the scriptures or the voice of our living prophets, with exactness.

All the best,

Editor@DesertSaintsMagazine.com