The Ant, the Grasshopper, and Spencer Kimball

Above: Spencer Kimball, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, from 1973 to 1985.

I met Spencer Kimball in the Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia, in 1978. I was director of a 300-voice choir performing at an LDS, New South Wales Regional Conference being held at the world-renowned opera house sitting at the edge of Sydney Harbor. Church President Kimball presided over the conference. Though President Kimball's handshake and greeting was warm and genuine, I felt like I was going through a Pearly Gate pre scan as he looked me in the eye. LDS membership veneration of their prophet can lead to the sense that "the prophet can see right through you." A profound worry about my foibles and faux pas covered me like a shroud for the next few weeks. I wondered, when I shook hands with President Kimball, did he discern that I was less the paragon of righteousness than I was expected to be?

Spencer Kimball's tough-minded warning (pictured here) about being prepared for things "falling apart" reminds me of the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant. The ant prepared for tough times and the grasshopper didn't. Warnings of the need for preparation for hard times go all the way back to biblical accounts of ancient Egypt. Genesis 41:54 "...and the seven years of famine began to come, as Joseph had said. There was famine in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread." There was bread because, as is reported in Genesis, Joseph had insisted on massive grain storage in anticipation of hard times.

I like Spencer Kimball's tough-minded message (pictured above) to the LDS faithful about being prepared for hard times. He cites other biblical stories about preparedness... the ten virgins from the New Testament and the lassitude of the people at the time of Noah, who were unprepared for the flood. I remember well from my younger days the hardnosed, admonitory warnings of other LDS prophets: David O. McKay and Ezra Taft Benson. Their frank, pointed, cautionary warnings about being ready for adversity has informed my thinking and planning over the years and continues to do so. After all, they were prophets, and warning is what prophets do.