“And when the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us to day before the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that, when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies.” (1 Samuel 3:3). After the Philistines beat the Israelites pretty badly, they were looking for a quick fix. Rather than recognize their defeat as an opportunity to examine their lives and determine what they themselves may have contributed to their current and awful situation, they decided to go and fetch the Ark of the Covenant and use it as some kind of talisman or magical object that could get them out of their predicament. How often are we like the Israelites in this story? If our lives are not all that we know they could be, it is so tempting to watch tutorials online or pay for expensive courses or buy a new car or a new house or get a new job or start a new relationship. But the answer is so much simpler than that. The Israelites sent people all the way back to Shiloh to get the Ark, but all they had to do was remember what the Ark represents. It is the Ark of the Covenant. They, just like we, can keep our covenants anywhere. We don't need to go fetch an ark or anything else. Would the Philistines have been able to defeat the children of Israel if they had been keeping their covenants and went into battle with the strength of the Lord? No! Did the Ark help them win the battle even though they weren't keeping their covenants? Also no. We can fill our bookcases with scriptures and volumes of doctrine or church history, but if we never crack them open and read them and more importantly try to put into practice the principles that they teach, then they aren't doing us any good just sitting there and collecting dust. We can donate half our paychecks to charitable causes and spend our whole weekends doing service, but if we have hate in our hearts for our neighbors or even our family members, is that charity work doing as much good as it could? Obviously we all fail to live up to our covenants and practice our religion in a much more limited capacity than we aspire to, but if there are small and simple but oh so important parts of our covenants that we know we are not living up to and have no plans to repent regarding those things and do better, then no amount of extra effort on other things can make up for these deficits. The Ark of the Covenant was a real and sacred object with actual significance to ancient rites and ordinances and had great power bound up with it in its proper place. But it was never intended to be used to smite down armies, especially not by an army that had forsaken so many other parts of their covenants. I hope that when we find ourselves in trouble, before we go off and fetch anything else, we fetch our covenants and especially our Savior, with Whom we have made these covenants. The real power that the Covenants bring into our lives is connecting us closer with the Savior. We can pile up every sacred object and relic in the world, but if we try using any or all of them without the Savior, it's not going to do us any good. Let us always keep our covenants and our Savior close so that we don't ever have to go fetch anything else.
