Essential to the Plan

I read an article that I wrote several years ago about Zoram.  ( See "Zoram" in I Have No Greater Joy).  I ended the article with the statement that he was "essential to the plan."  I have been turning that statement over in my mind.

Zoram was an ordinary, obscure person; but without him there would have been no Lehi/Nephi saga to report on, no Book of Mormon, and no latter-day restoration of the gospel as we know it.  Zoram was a good man who was placed by the Lord into the service of Laban so that he could accomplish some things which were vital to the Lord's plan.  He was foreordained to that purpose, and faithfully carried out his assignment.

The question that Has been in my mind for the past week is this:  Are you and I essential to the plan?

I think of the story told by Elder Kevin S. Hamilton of the Seventy in the October 2013 general conference.  He says:

"My father could remember the very day, even the very hour, that his family—father, mother, and four children—left the Church, many never to return again in this life.  He was 13 years old, a deacon, and in those days families attended Sunday School in the morning and then sacrament meeting in the afternoon.  On a beautiful spring day, after returning home from Sunday worship services and having a midday family meal together, his mother turned to his father and asked simply, 'Well, dear, do you think we should go to sacrament meeting this afternoon, or should we take the family for a ride in the country?'

"The idea that there was an option to sacrament meeting had never occurred to my father, but he and his three teenage siblings all sat up and paid careful attention.  That Sunday afternoon ride in the country was probably an enjoyable family activity, but that small decision became the start of a new direction which ultimately led his family away from the Church with its safety, security, and blessings and onto a different path...

"My father was fortunate to marry a good woman who encouraged him to come back to the church of his youth and begin again to progress along the path.  Their faithful lives have blessed all of their children, the next generation of grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren."  (Ensign, November 2013, pg. 99-101).

The posterity of that couple has been raised in the Church.  All are happy, productive members with strong testimonies.  One is even a general authority.  The three siblings of that 13-year-old young man and their posterity are all far away from the Church, and are experiencing all of the troubles and vicissitudes that people of the world suffer.

The parents of those four children were essential to the plan.  They were sent here to raise those children in righteousness so that those four children and their posterity could be happy, and could return to be with their Father in Heaven.  That couple was not faithful.  They abandoned their covenants.  They failed in their duty.  They let the Lord and their posterity down.  Because of them, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people lost their opportunity to make covenants, to be happy, and to eventually be exalted and to create new worlds.  They were essential to the plan for the thousands of Heavenly Father's children who would be their posterity.  Because of their failure, that family's happy success story will never be written.

If I was a clever electrician, or a savvy computer expert, I would like to create a visual display that would graphically show how each of us is essential to the plan.  I think it would be quite dramatic.

Each of us is an obscure individual sent to earth as part of a vast family that potentially reaches an infinite distance in both directions.  In my display I would be represented by a single dot of light in the middle of a totally black screen.  That dot of light would represent one covenant-making, covenant-keeping individual.  As each of that individual's children is born in the covenant, another dot of light would appear below his dot.  As each of their children is born in the covenant, another dot would appear below theirs.  Above the initial dot, additional lights would come on each time an ancestor's name, or that of one of his descendants, was taken to the temple and covenants were made in his or her behalf.  The lights would come on faster and faster as more and more babies were born and as more and more people were working on the ancestral lines and doing the ancestors' temple work.

That initial dot can represent anyone.  It's easy to see how essential any one person is to the plan.  If someone's light was to go out through inactivity, apostasy, or indifference, no additional lights either above or below his would come on.  Those individuals who had been depending on him would remain in darkness.

I am essential to the plan, and so are you.