What would you do?

Let's say you built a beautiful house, custom everything, all the upgrades, in a lovely neighborhood. And when I say you built it, I mean YOU built it, not you hired someone to build it. You intended to live there the rest of your life, you have no intention of ever moving again, in fact this house, and the grounds are so amazing you intend to pass this estate onto your children and they to their grandchildren.

And then. . . the neighborhood starts to get run down, your neighbors start to move out leaving their older houses vacant. A few miles away a new neighborhood begins to be the "in" place to live, "anyone who is anyone" is moving there.

What would you do? Would you move too?

If you were a Mormon you might chose to take your cue from the LDS church.

The Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City is a symbol of the LDS faith recognized throughout the world. It is a magnificent structure, built over the course of 40 years by Mormon pioneers. Everything was done by hand, there were no power tools, the marble was quarried and hauled out of mountains, the designs in the marble were etched by hand, the woodwork was all chiseled by hand, the murals that cover the walls are all hand painted originals, the gardens win national awards year after year.
The building itself is a treasure of American History, so when Downtown Salt Lake City started to get a little dusty and deserted, the church administration decided to do something about it. And when I say something I mean SOMETHING.
It was announced at general conference two weeks ago and this week's Church News (isn't it cool that we have our own weekly newspaper?) gave the details. I for one can't wait to see it- maybe I'll even consider visiting by 2011. (I'm kidding mom, maybe 2009.)
You can read what they are planning here.

So, why did I write about this?
I think we all have an opportunity to make the place that we are better. We all have limited resources of time and energy in this life. If I choose to put my time and energy into something, such as my house, my job, and my family, those things should become important to me. If things take a down turn, if my back yard is overgrown, if the business experiences a bad year, if my husband is too busy for me, it would be easy to close the blinds, find a new job, or - well I can't even write it, but you get the idea. It's more difficult to say, this is important to me and I will be creative, I will put forth all I have to make this better, I will give MORE when more is what is needed. But in the end, if something is important enough for you to give your time and energy too, shouldn't it be important enough to "save" if needs be.
Now don't get me wrong, I quit a job once, but I only stayed there for 6 months before I knew it wasn't worth what I was giving it. I had to cut my losses and go. It just seems like our society is all about getting out, moving on, skipping town. I say, my life is important to me, I only get to live it once. I will live it in a way that I will want to defend, I will spend it in activities that are worth giving it to.