Come Together

Organizing the inventory on the shelves in the back room of Sears shoe department was my responsibility when there were very few customers on the sales floor.  I was seventeen and though it wasn't the most exciting part-time work, it still gave me a paycheck.  I beat the boring doldrums in the backroom with my multi-cassette anthology album of The Beatles.  No doubt that when my headphones were in, I unknowingly serenaded a few passing customers to "Hey Jude."  I must have listened to that anthology a hundred times.  Something close to an obsession, I went through a phase of my own Beetle's mania.  Have you ever looked up the lyrics to "Come Together?" Yeah.... all this time, I've been singing it wrong.  I always wondered what it meant by, "hold you in his armchair or Morris Jumboo." (Those lyrics, even when they're sung right, never made sense anyway.)  Toe jam football?  Joo joo eyeballs?  Those guys were so high but I still loved them.

I seem to associate everything in life with music and for some reason, every time I hear a talk on unity or Zion, "Come Together" begins to play in my head (not exactly saturated with religious analogy, I know.) Even still, one morning, I thought it would make the perfect wake-up song to bring our kids out for family scripture study. so I turned on the living room speakers and I sang into the hall, "Come together, right now... and we'll read."  Don't try that at home, your kids will hate you forever.  (Just saying.) It was fun for me.

But speaking of coming together, of unity, and of studying scripture.  I've been thinking about the gathering that is happening in these last days.  Traveling to the United Nations and experiencing World Congress last year helped open my eyes to this incredible miracle that is happening right now.  People of all faiths and religions, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all working together to defend religious freedom and the family.

President Henry B. Eyring expounds on this principle:
"We see increased conflict between peoples in the world around us. Those divisions and differences could infect us. That is why my message of hope today is that a great day of unity is coming...

The Lord’s prophets have always called for unity. The need for that gift to be granted to us and the challenge to maintain it will grow greater in the days ahead, in which we will be prepared as a people for our glorious destiny....  
You have seen evidence, as I have, that we are moving toward becoming one. The miracle of unity is being granted to us as we pray and work for it in the Lord’s way. Our hearts will be knit together in unity. God has promised that blessing to His faithful Saints whatever their differences in background and whatever conflict rages around them. He was praying for us as well as His disciples when He asked His Father that we might be one. The reason that we pray and ask for that blessing is the same reason the Father is granting it. We know from experience that joy comes when we are blessed with unity."

Having our hearts and spirits knit together in purpose, in love, in light, and in truth is the way to joy.  I have experienced this for myself and know it to be true.
It's no coincidence to me that right smack in the middle of Lehi's and Nephi's vision of the Tree of Life, you find this verse, "And blessed are they who shall seek to bring forth my Zion at that day, for they shall have the gift and the power of the Holly ghost; and if they endure unto the end they shall be lifted up at the last day, and shall be saved in the everlasting kingdom of the Lamb; and whoso shall publish peace, yea, tidings of great joy, how beautiful upon the mountains shall they be." - 1 Nephi 13:37

No matter how fiery the trial that comes, no matter the struggle, no matter the midst of darkness or the persecution that settles around us, I pray my heart will never lose courage.  I pray I will keep the vision of hope alive, the vision of Zion and trust that "They that be with us are more than they that be with them." (2 Kings 6:16.)  
For "There is hope smiling brightly before us, and we know that deliverance is nigh." -Hymn 19

-Alicia