I've made a goal to buckle down and work on my Young Women's Personal Progress. I've chosen every Tuesday morning to be my day for this. It's pretty easy to record online and I can enter my journal notes right there on the website. As young women leaders, we're all going to take turns letting the girls know how our own progress is going and we hope it will inspire them to keep moving on theirs.
This morning, I spent some time studying about the Atonement and the Plan of Salvation. In the church, these are fundamental doctrines we have learned over and over our entire lives. With the frequency of these topics, it might be easy to lose interest but I was really grateful to take a moment, read the scriptures related, and reflect on a couple of questions. "How does the knowledge of these teachings affect my actions, help me understand my identity, and strengthen my faith?"
Understanding that we are literal spirit children of God, that we lived with Him before we came to earth, that we knew each other, is an incredibly amazing teaching. It's unique to the Restored Gospel but I believe that there are many outside the church who have been given a sense of this great truth:
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Our spirits are eternal in nature. This tangible light has a life-span we cannot comprehend. Joseph Smith expounded in his King Follett Sermon;
"I want to reason more on the spirit of man; for I am dwelling on the body and spirit of man—on the subject of the dead. I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man—the immortal part, because it had no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; then it has a beginning and an end; but join it again, and it continues one eternal round. So with the spirit of man. As the Lord liveth, if it had a beginning, it will have an end. All the fools and learned and wise men from the beginning of creation, who say that the spirit of man had a beginning, prove that it must have an end; and if that doctrine is true, then the doctrine of annihilation would be true. But if I am right, I might with boldness proclaim from the housetops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself.
Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle. It is a spirit from age to age and there is no creation about it. All the minds and spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement."
God is an eternal being, we are all eternal beings. God is all about gathering, about "oneness", about togetherness. Even when we speak of being separated from God, it is not His undoing but our own. He is not the one who severs ties, who divides relationships, or breaks apart - these are things that exist in the physical and temporal realm. And those who never learn to live by and receive Christ's spirit will be bound to this physical and temporal plane of existence.
This must be why there is pain in separation, because such an experience flows completely contrary to our Divine nature. Nevertheless, it is a necessary part of our growth and learning. Everything that hurts us, that is painful, ministers to our mortal education here on earth. But with the Gospel lens of truth, we have a glimpse of Heaven and we are given strength to endure.
"Though otherwise 'lively,' hope stands quietly with us at funerals. Our tears are just as wet, but not because of despair. Rather, they are tears of appreciation evoked by poignant separation. They will change, erelong, to tears of glorious anticipation. Yet the emptiness is so real and so restless it initiates a retroactive inventory of what is now so painfully missing, doing so, however, while forecasting fulness and resplendent reunion!" - Neal A. Maxwell
"When such a friend from us departs,
We hold forever in our hearts
A sweet and hallowed memory,
Bringing us nearer, Lord, to thee." - Hymn #293
We could try to numb ourselves and pretend there is no ache, no pain when we are separated from those we love but such an attempt would only prove to dull the Divine attributes inherent within us and thwart our progress.
"Moreover, we can’t fully appreciate joyful reunions later without tearful separations now. The only way to take sorrow out of death (or separation) is to take love out of life." - Elder Russell M. Nelson
We find hope in Christ, knowing that He has bridged the gulf of the great divide and through His great atoning sacrifice, there is no such thing as the end, there is no such thing as separation, no more farewells and no more goodbyes. We find our our way "home" in eternal principles.
"There is no end to matter; There is no end to space; There is no end to spirit; There is no end to race. There is no end to virtue; There is no end to might; There is no end to wisdom; There is no end to light. There is no end to union; There is no end to youth; There is no end to priesthood; There is no end to truth. There is no end to glory; There is no end to love; There is no end to being; There is no death above. There is no end to glory; There is no end to love; There is no end to being; There is no death above."
-Alicia
