I’m thinking about the contents of my wallet.  I worry about its thickness.  I find that when I drive for extended distances, my hip begins to bother me.  The longer and farther I drive, the more uncomfortable I become.  The problem is my wallet.  If I sit on a fat wallet, it unbalances my spine and causes hip and back problems.  If I remember to take my wallet out of my pocket at the beginning of a drive, I have no problem.

The thickness of my wallet has nothing to do with money—there is rarely any there.  My wallet is made fat or thin by the number of cards therein.  I, therefore, try to limit the cards that I carry.  The only cards I’ll carry are those that do me a favor.  If the purpose of carrying a card is to do a store a favor, I won’t do it.  If the store wants my business, they won’t require me to show a card to get in.  I’m there to do them a favor, and not vice versa.

I carry a library card.  The library is doing me a favor by lending me books so that I don’t have to buy them.  Borrowing their books doesn’t cost me a thing as long as I live by their rules.  I’m grateful for the library’s service.

I carry one credit card.  It’s a mistake to have more than one; but that one is a huge convenience to me.  I can use it to order things over the phone, buy things when I’ve forgotten my check book, and I don’t have to carry wallet-thickening wads of cash.

I carry my driver’s license.  The clerk at the store usually wants to see it before I use my credit card to make sure I’m who I say that I am.  I make it a point to always thank the cashiers and clerks who ask to see my identification before completing my transactions.  Those cashiers and clerks would prevent my credit card from being used improperly if it was stolen.  The clerks who fail to ask for my ID might think they’re doing me a favor; but in reality, they could be doing me a tremendous disservice.

I carry my health insurance card.  That card saves me from having to pay painful amounts of money when I’m ill-prepared to do so.  I carry a gas card that enables me to fuel up my own vehicle at a card-lock service station.  Those five cards, plus one more, are all the cards that I carry.  They’re all for my convenience, and they all do me favors.

The sixth card that I carry is the most important by far.  It confers more favors upon me than any other single thing in the whole world.  I’ve faithfully carried that card and its predecessors for over 44 years.  That card admits me to the most sacred, peaceful and holy place on earth.  That card gave me my wife and my children, and the guarantee that they’d be mine forever if I live so as to always be worthy to carry it.  That card is a symbol of my worthiness.  That card admits me to the celestial room of the temple, which is symbolic of my eventually gaining admittance to the Celestial Kingdom of God.

My goal is that when I die, they’ll find a temple recommend in my thin, little wallet.  It’s a great privilege to be a card-carrying member of the Church.