Now, Instead of skill or knowledge growth, let us consider the internal growth (emotional and spiritual) of an individual. Let us say, for instance, that a particular mother is at day five intectually (to use the analogy of the six days of creation) but at day two emotionally. Everything is okay when the sun is shining or when things go well. But what happens when fatigue and/or the pressure of screaming kids, diapers, dishes and telephones join together? Or struggling with uncooperative teen-agers and a husband who is always gone?

This emotionally immature mother may find herself absolutley enslaved to the emotions of anger, impatience, and criticalness. She may find herself incapable of acting upon what she knows in her mind is right, because of the built-in, ingrained habit of losing her temper. All this adds to her guilty feeling. And yet in public, when things are going well, one may never detect this internal deficency, this emotional immaturity. She has a good mind and seems to be patient and in control.

It means, as I understand it, that the fullest flow of the Spirit of God comes to us through His appointed channels or ordinances. The sacrament is the central and oft-repeated ordinance that transmits that power to us. Indeed, it is the ordinance that gives focus to all other ordinances. And this is what President McKay meant, I believe, when he said he loved the phrase of Peter: "We may be partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Eventually, through a lifetime, His spirit can sanctify the very elements of our bodies until we become capable of celestial resurrection.

In baptism we are born once—born of the water and of the spirit. In the sacrament we are reborn, over and over, of the bread and of the wine or water and we are truly what we eat. But, not all at once. Can we eat one meal that will last us a lifetime? Some of us occasionally try. Do we not need daily nourishment? In fact, the phrase in the Lord's prayer, the model prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matt. 6:11) may mean "Give us today a foretaste of the meal we will eat with you when you return to us."

We need it oft, and thus on the Sabbath, we gather together, having been told, that we are to be together, that our communication may become communion. And though we come from every degree on the emotional compass, each of us is more or less empty and more or less in need.

Sisters, we have a faith in unity and the Prophet Joseph Smith makes it clear [and this in a remark to the Relief Society] that it is by "union of feeling [that] we obtain power with God" (Relief Society Minutes, June 9, 1842, Church Archives; cf. TPJS, p. 91). We may have different beliefs and temperaments and backgrounds, but we can all feel one when we are taking the sacrament together. Indeed, it is by union of feeling that we obtain power.

Work brings happiness, self-esteem, and prosperity. It is the means of all accomplishment; it is the opposite of idleness. We are commanded to work. (See Gen. 3:19.) Attempts to obtain our temporal, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being by means of a dole violate the divine mandate that we should work for what we receive. Work should be the ruling principle in the lives of our Church membership. (See D&C 42:42; D&C 56:17; D&C 68:30–32; D&C 75:29.)