Urgency comes from knowing that there is much to do and little time to do it.
In the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, a landowner hires a group of people early in the morning to work in his vineyard. As the day progresses, he recruits additional workers at the third hour, the sixth hour, and the ninth hour. Finally, at the eleventh hour, he sees a group of people who have not yet been hired, and he puts them to work for the last hour of the twelve-hour work day. All of the workers receive the same reward, indicating that in God’s work, what matters most is not the magnitude of our contribution, but on our willingness to do what He asks us to do. (See Matthew 20:1-16.)
In the Book of Mormon, there is a similar story. Near the end of Zenos’s Allegory of the Olive Tree, the situation becomes desperate. The entire vineyard is going bad; all the trees have become corrupted. The Lord of the Vineyard instructs His lone servant, “Go to, and call servants, that we may labor diligently with our might in the vineyard, that we may prepare the way, that I may bring forth again the natural fruit.” Then, he adds, “for behold the end draweth nigh, and this is for the last time that I shall prune my vineyard” (Jacob 5:61-62).
In an October 1830 revelation to Ezra Thayer and Northrup Sweet, the Lord combines imagery from these two parables to emphasize the urgency of the work they are called to do:
Ye are called to lift up your voices as with the sound of a trump, to declare my gospel unto a crooked and perverse generation.
For behold, the field is white already to harvest; and it is the eleventh hour, and the last time that I shall call laborers into my vineyard.
And my vineyard has become corrupted every whit; and there is none which doeth good save it be a few. …
And even so will I gather mine elect from the four quarters of the earth, even as many as will believe in me, and hearken unto my voice.
Doctrine and Covenants 33:2-4, 6
The expression “the eleventh hour” carries a sense of urgency. Time is running short, and there is much work to be done.
President Russell M. Nelson echoed this sense of urgency this past weekend:
We do not know the day or the hour of His coming. But I do know that the Lord is prompting me to urge us to get ready for that “great and dreadful day.”
“Confidence in the Presence of God,” General Conference, April 2025
Today, I will labor with urgency. I will see myself as an eleventh-hour laborer in the Savior’s parable or as a servant recruited to labor for the last time in the olive grove. I will strive to do what must be done before the Savior’s return to the earth.
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