My piano-playing wife has a new, favorite composer.  Through all of our married life she has daily been at the piano playing Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Scott Joplin, and the like.  There are two pianos in the house, and because she taught most of our children how to play, both pianos were often playing in different rooms at the same time.  With the children all gone now, our home is quieter, but I’m noticing that Marjorie is unable to walk past our pianos without sitting down to run through the pieces given to us by her new, favorite composer.

Our youngest daughter has taken it upon herself to put all 100 seminary scripture masteries to music.  She has about 30 of them completed.  They’re all original, catchy tunes with complete piano accompaniment.  The lyrics are straight out of the scriptures, and most often have the chapter and verse of the scripture built into the tunes’ lyrics as well.

Our daughter’s purpose is to make these scriptures easy to memorize.  As a consequence, I believe that her 5-year-old and 3-year-old daughters can sing all of her completed pieces by heart.

So can Marjorie.  Because she plays them over and over the tunes get stuck in my head all day without the lyrics.  It’s exasperating to me to have the tune in my head without the words, but Marjorie has them all down.  Thus it is that when she isn’t playing the piano, she is humming as she goes about her work.  Her mind is constantly going over the words of these choice scriptures that have such priceless messages embedded in them.

Perhaps Marjorie’s favorite is Matthew 11:28-30:

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart:  and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

A yoke is a piece of wood or a frame that fits over the neck of a person or animal enabling the person to carry buckets, or the animal to pull a plow.

There are two yokes mentioned in the scriptures.  One is the yoke of Christ.  The other is the yoke of bondage.  (Alma 61:12).  We have a choice.  We can choose to take upon us the yoke of Christ, or the world will put upon us the yoke of bondage.

Another seminary scripture mastery states this choice in different words:

“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man.  And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.”  (2 Ne. 2:27).

For example, Elder Keven S. Hamilton in the October 2013 general conference told of the day that his grandparents’ family became less active in the Church.  They had returned from their morning Sabbath day church meetings, and had eaten their midday meal when the wife turned to her husband and asked, “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?”  (Ensign, Nov. 2013, pg. 99).

That simple decision to not attend sacrament meeting led the family, including the four teenage children therein, into complete inactivity.  Elder Hamilton’s father, who was 13 at the time, was fortunate to later meet his future wife who led him back into activity.  The children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of his siblings all grew up out of the Church, and were thus exposed to all of the regrets, anxieties, addictions, guilt and shame that the world and the adversary desire to put upon us.

My wife and I did not set out to have 10 children.  She tells me that at one point we both thought we might end up with eight, but we left the decision in the hands of the Lord.  Caring for eight children was hard, especially since numbers 6, 7, and 8 were all rambunctious boys.  Sometimes Marjorie might have wondered if going to church was even worth it, since she couldn’t listen to the sacrament meeting talks anyway.

But she persisted.  Now all 10 children, and all 48 grandchildren are in church every Sunday, and she doesn’t have even one baby or toddler with whom to wrestle through the meetings.  Church meetings are enjoyable.  Life is peaceful, and she feels a great feeling of satisfaction.

It wasn’t always that way.  A yoke is a yoke, and a yoke denotes work.  We decided to not exercise our own wills in deciding how many children to have, but left that decision up to the Lord.  A new baby came into the family every other year until the eighth one arrived.  This yoke didn’t seem light.  There is nothing easy about teaching, training, and feeding eight children, and keeping them in clean clothes, especially when the three smallest are boys.

Four years went by.  There was light at the end of the tunnel—and then baby number nine arrived.  Learning that there was to be another baby was initially a let-down for this busy mother who thought she might only have 8, but the baby turned out to be the one who is now writing all of those catchy scripture mastery tunes that have captivated her parents’ minds.

Six more years went by before baby number 10 put in his appearance.  Was this yoke easy, and this burden light?  Not then, but now that number 10 has returned from his mission and is pursuing his education and life, his parents have largely forgotten any hardships they experienced while raising their family, and are basking in the satisfaction of seeing their posterity well on their way to happiness and eternal life.

“My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” the Savior said.  That’s true, but it’s still work.  The alternative is the yoke of bondage, which is heartache and regret.

The secret to making the right choice is obedience.  The secret is in subjecting your will to the will of the Father.  He knows what is best, and what will raise you to your full potential.  It won’t be the path that you’d choose if left to your own devices, but it will be the path that will leave you ultimately grateful.  You will find yourself thanking the Lord over and over again for blessing you in ways you hadn’t dreamed possible.

Consider the story of the Hawaiian family told in the April 1980 general conference by John H. Groberg:

“In the early 1900s, a young father and his family joined the Church in Hawaii.  He was enthused about his new-found religion, and after two years of membership both he and his eldest son held the priesthood.  They prospered and enjoyed the fellowship of the little branch.  They anxiously looked forward to being sealed as a family for eternity in the temple soon to be completed in Laie.

“Then as so often happens, a test crossed their path.  One of their daughters became ill with an unknown disease and was taken away to a strange hospital.  People in Hawaii were understandably wary of unknown diseases, as such diseases had wrought so much havoc there.

“The concerned family went to church the next Sunday, looking forward to the strength and understanding they would receive from their fellow members.  It was a small branch.  This young father and his son very often took the responsibility for blessing and passing the sacrament.  This was one such Sunday.  They reverently broke the bread while the congregation sang the sacrament hymn.  When the hymn was finished, the young father began to kneel to offer the sacrament prayer.  Suddenly the branch president, realizing who was at the sacred table, sprang to his feet.  He pointed his finger and cried, ‘Stop.  You can’t touch the sacrament.  Your daughter has an unknown disease.  Leave immediately while someone else fixes new sacrament bread.  We can’t have you here.  Go.’

“How would you react?  What would you do?

“The stunned father slowly stood up.  He searchingly looked at the branch president, then at the congregation.  Then, sensing the depth of anxiety and embarrassment from all, he motioned to his family and they quietly filed out of the chapel.

“Not a word was said as, with faces to the ground, they moved along the dusty trail to their small home.  The young son noticed the firmness in his father’s clenched fists and the tenseness of his set jaw.  When they entered their home they all sat in a circle, and the father said, ‘We will be silent until I am ready to speak.’  All sorts of thoughts went through the mind of this young boy.  He envisioned his father coming up with many novel ways of getting revenge.  Would they kill the branch president’s pigs, or burn his house, or join another church?  He could hardly wait to see what would happen.

“Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes—not a sound.  He glanced at his father.  His eyes were closed, his mouth was set, his fingers clenched, but no sound.  Twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes—still nothing.  Then he noticed a slight relaxing of his father’s lips, then a barely perceptible sob.  He looked at his father—tears were trickling down his cheeks from closed eyes.  Soon he noticed his mother was crying also, then one child, then another, and soon the whole family.

“Finally, the father opened his eyes, cleared his throat, and announced, ‘I am now ready to speak.  Listen carefully.’  He slowly turned to his wife and said, meaningfully, ‘I love you.’  Then turning to each child, he told them individually, ‘I love you.  I love all of you and I want us to be together, forever, as a family.  And the only way that can be is for all of us to be good members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and be sealed by his holy priesthood in the temple.  This is not the branch president’s church.  It is the Church of Jesus Christ.  We will not let any man or any amount of hurt or embarrassment or pride keep us from being together forever.  Next Sunday we will go back to church.  We will stay by ourselves until our daughter’s sickness is known, but we will go back.’

“This great man had proper eternal perspective.

“The daughter’s health problem was resolved; the family did go to the temple when it was completed.  The children did remain faithful and were likewise sealed to their own families in the temple as time went on.  Today over 100 souls in this family are active members of the Church and call their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather blessed because he kept his eyes on eternity, because he used his priesthood to bless his family, and because he recorded his feelings.  How the heart of this father turned to his children, and how his children’s hearts turned to him.”  (Ensign, May 1980, pg. 49).

How different that story could have turned out had the father chosen not to be obedient, and to have followed his own will and instincts!

The Savior’s gospel is a rock, not an umbrella.  He whose feet are firmly planted on the rock of obedience to the Lord’s commandments will not be washed away by the rains that come in all of our lives.  The floods will eventually recede, and he and his posterity will still be found standing safely and happily on the rock.

Obedience is the principle that precedes faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost.  It is also the principle that enables us to endure to the end.

He who endures to the end through all the trials of life will be able to testify that the Savior’s yoke truly is easy, and His burden light.