Of Farewells and Forever

My son considers the final chapters of The Lord of the Rings evidence that Tolkien did not know when and how to end a book.  On the other hand, I have always loved those chapters.  I find the passages deeply moving each time I read them.  In a book rich in art and story they speak to my heart while tying important threads of the work together, completing the grand pattern woven of many tales, valuable to the telling of the greater story.

Part of the attraction for me, as with other great books with which I have enjoyed many a memorable experience, is that I am reluctant to close the cover and say goodbye.  These final chapters of The Lord of the Rings are a prolonged goodbye in a trilogy that is at its core a farewell to a whole world that Tolkien spent his life elaborating and never finished.

Like other great books of art, the work brings into bold relief important themes of reality.  In this life we experience a continuing series of goodbyes.  They fill our hearts with a tenderness, with a longing for lingering. 

For those who consider this life all that there is, goodbyes have a dreadful finality without remedy.  The dear one is gone, the experience has ended, something cherished is lost.  These are finalities that are hard to face.  People avoid them or refuse to recognize them when they cannot be avoided. 

Notice even in our language of parting that our words have a lingering quality about them, as if there were no break, as if there were an enduring connection, another day. We do not seem to have a parting phrase that means, “so it ends,” or, “it is over, done.”  Instead, we use words like, “goodbye,” a contraction of “God be with ye,” as if to connect us by our wishes and thoughts to the one leaving.  Similarly, “farewell” carries with it our interest in the future success of our family member or friend.  And, “until we meet again,” expresses the expectation, however forlorn, of another day in each other’s presence.  Those words, however, cannot mend the finality of it all if there is nothing beyond this life. 

If this life is all that there is, there comes a time when there will be no other day of meeting.  This life is then full of endings that are absolute and unalterable, the greatest of which is our own ending, when with our departure all existence ceases for all that it concerns us.  The awesomeness of that leaves a longing for something more, something to convey meaning that otherwise would not exist.  If when we die all is done, if there is no more, then how does anything matter?  We intuit, “there must be something more.”

Indeed there is.  Rather than finality governing mortality, the defining characteristic of this life is that so much around us is so very temporary.  As it should be.  This life was designed as a temporary existence, a brief exception to the order of the universe, ever changing with the movement of time.  Mortality was not designed to be the end of anything, the only finality being when mortality itself comes to its conclusion and this world is brought back into the realm of the eternities, where real, unending life prevails.

Jesus Christ descended from the eternal worlds into the world of mortality in order to preserve all good things forever.  An angel, a messenger from the eternal worlds, explained it to the ancient prophet Nephi as “the condescension of God,” whereby Jesus, the Savior, experienced all things mortal, and suffered for all things mortal, including death itself, gaining power to preserve all of this world worth preserving and worthy of being brought into the eternities (see 1 Nephi 11:26-33).  With His resurrection, Christ left mortality, creating the avenue for all of us to leave it as well and bring with us all that we had gained from our mortal experience.

Most important of these gains are our relationships with each other.  Most important among these relationships are those of the family, of parent and child and, highest of all, of husband and wife.  All that matters, and these relationships matter most, is preserved through Christ.

Without Christ, as everything perished it would be lost.  People would die and would be eventually forgotten, their works decayed and vanished.  Memories would fade.  Relationships would end.  All would end, constantly, until the end of the earth itself, a pointless and meaningless existence.  Without Christ and His atonement, there would be a dreadful finality to every parting, every last touch, every last glance, every last memory clothed with a hopeless END that nothing could cure.  With Christ, every good thing is saved.

By receiving Christ, since entering into His eternal order through the ordinances that He prescribed and authorized, I have the promise that the farewells have become temporary.  The goodbyes and the partings have an end.  Even death itself is swallowed up as a transient phase of life.  I have no fears of losing any good thing but rather peaceful confidence of inheriting all good things forever.

Of Personality and Order

While making no personal claims to psychological insight, I have found great value in the Jung-Myers approach to understanding human personalities.  Part of that approach identifies four major personality temperaments toward which each of us gravitates to one degree or another.  The work of Carl Jung and Isabel Myers—and many others building on that work—has elaborated the theory that in the world of people there is a variety of personalities all interacting and contributing to the social richness of humanity.  None of these four temperaments is “right” or “wrong.”  They are just different, and that difference is valuable and, moreover, worthy of understanding so that we can get along better in our interactions with each other.

I have seen all four of these temperaments in my small family of a mere 7 souls.  I consider the variety enriching to our family more than frustrating.  This insight has helped me understand where my children are coming from when I might otherwise think that any one of them has been replaced by a space alien.

Using that framework and watching my fellow travelers through life over decades of interaction, I have personally found it useful to describe the four temperaments in the following way, with regard to each person’s approach to his environment, or the world around us.

·         First (in no order of priority or relative value), there are those who come to grips with their world by seeking to be in harmony with their environment.  My wife is in this category.

·         Second, there are those who primarily seek to enjoy their environment.  I believe that two of my daughters are in this group.

·         Third are those who seek to organize their environment.  I think that I would consider myself as being in this group, along with perhaps a son and a daughter.

·         And a fourth group would be those who seek to protect themselves from their environment.  I believe that one of my sons would be found here.

Again, I emphasize that no temperament is better than the other.  They are just different.  And we need them all.  Moreover, some of each can be found in the attitudes of any one of us from time to time.  The point is which approach is dominant in the way we each live our lives.  Together, they all contribute to the success of our society.  That is to say, that whatever our temperament, we rely upon our brothers and sisters who have different temperaments to help make us and our society complete.

I do not consider this to be an accidental development but an essential element of God’s plan for the society of His children.  In several places in the scriptures God reminds us of the variety of gifts that He has given, emphasizing that we can and need to embrace and profit from each gift, all taken together.  “For the body is not one member, but many,” the Apostle Paul explained, and no part of the body can say to the other, “I have no need of thee” (see 1 Corinthians 12:14-21).

But does not all of this difference lead to disunity and perhaps even chaos?  It can, and has, but it does not need to.  Any personality trait, any temperament, any gift, if taken to the extreme or out of balance can result in harm to others.  There are plenty of examples in the long history of mankind of one taking advantage over another, either into anarchy or tyranny.  This is one of the structural failings of absolute monarchy or dictatorship, where too much of the society is guided by one person and his or her approach to the world.  The temptation to fit all of the people into that mold is natural and hard for the dictator to resist (if he even recognizes it).  On the other hand, there would be chaos if all had full license to live their preferences in disregard of others.

Many of the commandments of God are intended to help us to keep our differences in balance and to maintain the close society that allows us to be fully enriched by one another.  One of the chapters in The Book of Mormon explains this process as being the establishment of order by means of the ordinances of God (see Alma chapter 13).  The similarity in the words is not accidental. 

Entering into the kingdom of God is nothing more nor less than making a solemn covenant—pledged and witnessed by the physical ordinance of  baptism by immersion—to accept God’s commandments for a society of order as defined by God, an order that accommodates all human gifts and temperaments and organizes them into an harmonious whole.  The two greatest commandments of the kingdom of God are to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (see Matthew 22:37-39).  In this system there are universal standards to bind us to one another by binding ourselves to our Savior Jesus Christ, who sacrificed to give us all the freedom to choose and be what those choices make us.

This verse from Alma chapter 13 describes the matter this way:

Now these ordinances were given after this manner, that thereby the people might look forward on the Son of God, it being a type of his order, or it being his order, and this that they might look forward to him for a remission of their sins, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord. (Alma 13:16)

Within the Savior’s order of peace there is full room to be at harmony with one’s environment, to enjoy it, in a well organized whole, where all are safe and at rest from fear.  Indeed, in the Kingdom of God is the one place where we all can have it all.  There is nowhere else like it for any of us.

Of Coming to Heaven and the Lord’s Supper

The lyrics to a Spanish song that I enjoy listening to include this line:

Para entrar en el cielo, no es preciso morir.

That translates into, “In order to enter heaven it is not necessary to die.”  Of course, that is true.  I have often said and know from some experience that eternal life can begin even in mortality, since the core element of eternal life is to possess the spiritual gift of charity, meaning the pure love of Christ (see Moroni 7:47), the one spiritual gift that never ends.

While it is not necessary to die to receive eternal life, we do need to come unto Christ.  Eternal life means living with God the Father, in His presence, and inheriting all that He has.  To qualify for that existence where perfect love and goodness prevail from this world of imperfection, corruption, and sin, it is necessary to come unto Christ, who has overcome all and who offers to help us to overcome all.

We come unto Christ only on His terms.  We cannot command that He come to us on our terms.  He is the perfect being, and we are very much short of that.  We are the ones with distance to cover.  Christ condescended to come as mortal man into our presence and our world of evil, but He did not condescend to partake of the evil.  We have.  He left our world through death, as we all will, but then was resurrected, which none were before Him, but because of whose resurrection all will follow.

Following resurrection, we will all be judged by the Father to determine whether we may remain in the Father’s presence and continue to grow and develop under His care.  At that judgment, Christ will identify for the Father those who have come to the Son and thereby qualified to remain in heaven.

How do we come unto Christ?  What are His terms?  Just these, that we solemnly promise by covenant with Him and the Father that we will accept Him and keep His commandments.  That is, we promise that we will follow Christ and stay with Him.  How can coming unto the Savior mean anything less?  Either we come unto Him or we do not.

The Savior has declared that this solemn promise and covenant is to be made in such a way as to be unmistakably imprinted on our minds, rich with the symbolism of washing away sin, burying the unrighteous way of life, and then rising to newness of life in accordance with the laws and ways of heaven.  This covenant and symbolism are present in the ordinance of baptism.  We place ourselves in the Savior’s hands via those whom He has personally chosen to represent Him.  We are buried in water, washed and cleansed from sin, and arise out of the water in the image of the resurrection into a Christian life.

The person who approaches baptism truly repentant of all of his sins, genuinely committed to a complete turning away from all evil, will feel the powers and joys of heaven filling his heart.  He will enter into the presence of God through the power of the Holy Ghost.  In fact, shortly after baptism, the next step in coming unto Christ is to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of Christ’s representatives, just as the Samaritans anciently, who were baptized by Philip and soon thereafter were given the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of the Apostles Peter and John (see Acts 8:12-17).

I have experienced those steps personally and testify that it works just that way.   Through faith, repentance, and baptism, sins are washed away, and through the gift of the Holy Ghost the heart is changed and filled with the gift of charity, the pure love of Christ.

Sad to say, and I would not excuse myself by noting that it happens to us all, not long after the covenant is made the covenant is broken, and it is not broken by God.  He perfectly fulfills His part.  On our part, sins are once again indulged in, old or new ones, or both.  The Spirit is grieved and withdraws, the gift of charity is also withdrawn, the man is left back on his own.  With the covenant broken what are we to do?

With a graciousness that far surpasses the patience of any mortal man, God allows us to remake the covenant and come unto Christ again.  We need not be rebaptized.  God has provided another ordinance that allows us to reaffirm the baptismal covenant and reclaim its powers and blessings.  As with baptism, it is a physical action that embodies a spiritual commitment.  Also, like baptism, it is designed and prescribed by God in a symbolic form that reminds us of Jesus Christ through whom our redemption is possible.

I refer to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  As with baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper comes in two parts.  In the first, we partake of broken bread, reminding us of the Savior’s body broken for us and soon after resurrected.  In the second we partake of water or wine to remind us of the blood shed by Christ in Gethsemane and on the cross.

As we partake of the sacrament with the same intent and spirit with which we were baptized, the whole baptismal covenant is reaffirmed and renewed, and we resume our Christian life.  We return to Christ.  We need this sacrament or our baptism would be nullified by our later sins.  We need it to retain the effects of our baptism.

It is astonishing, really.  It is a marvelous manifestation of the grace of God that He offers us this opportunity, weekly, to renew our solemn baptismal promises that we not so solemnly break.  While we renege, the Lord does not.  In fact, He offers us the second, third, and hundredth chance, which by all rights and justice He need not do.  Which of us would have such patience with those who broke their promises to us?

Because of the Lord’s patience, to enter into heaven, the presence of God, again and again, it is not necessary to die.  It is necessary to live, and to do that we must come unto Christ, and He beckons to us, all the time.  Why wait to answer His call?

Of Life and the Church of Christ

This past Sunday I was reminded, as I am often reminded, of one of the distinguishing features of the church of Jesus Christ:  it is alive.  That characteristic powerfully impressed me from my first attendance at a meeting of the church, when I was thirteen.  No more than 100 members, gathered in the rented second floor of a Grange Hall in a western New York village, hymns sung accompanied by a volunteer pianist on a beat up honky-tonk piano, sermons provided from the rank and file of the membership, Sunday School taught in a kitchen and class members sitting on a few folding chairs arranged around the cooking stove—all was alive and vibrant.  That same spiritual life was present when as a missionary in Spain we met with fewer than a dozen people in a swept-out garage.  And it was present when I joined thousands in a meeting at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City for the church’s annual June youth conference.  I have found it wherever I have gathered with the members of Christ’s church. 

In each and every case, the building contributed more or less to comfort but had little to do with the sense of the church being alive.  In my childhood I had been a frequent attendee at the meetings of Protestant churches in pleasant and neat but not ostentatious surroundings, and I have since visited some of the most magnificent cathedrals of the world.  But I sensed something palpably different and alive, noticeable even to a young teenager, when I first set foot in Christ’s church, and each time since. 

I conclude that the life comes from Jesus Christ, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, flowing through those gathered in His name at His call.  It is as the Savior promised to His saints, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20)  The Savior explained to the Sadducees anciently, who had the form of worship without its life, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22:32)  The things I had been taught from the scriptures, revered as dead relics in an old museum in the other churches I had known, came to life in the church of Christ.

Unable to articulate precisely what he was seeking—other than the truth—the fourteen-year old Joseph Smith learned from God Himself in 1820 what was missing in the churches of his day, what held Joseph back from joining with any of them even after persistent earnest inquiries.  Said the Lord to Joseph, in answer to his simple prayer, “they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” (Joseph Smith History, verse 19)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, just as the church of Christ of the saints in ancient days, is full of life, it is all about life and the overcoming of death.  Its victory over death is not just a promise for the future, beyond this world of mortality.  It brings life from the eternal worlds and extends it among men and women today, in this world where temporary things would otherwise seem to prevail. 

The Church reveres the prophets and apostles of antiquity and treasures their testimony, but it is led—as Christ’s living church always has been—by living apostles and prophets who receive direct revelation pertinent to conditions and needs in our day.  Along with the prophets come scriptures, as we write down the inspired words of the apostles and prophets.  With roots firmly planted in the ancient scriptures of the Holy Bible and The Book of Mormon, the tree of revelation has not withered or died but continues growing in Christ’s modern church, providing divine guidance to a world that never needed it more.

There are no crucifixes to be found in the modern church of Christ, not because the Church does not recognize the infinite atonement of the Savior, but because that atonement was fulfilled by the resurrection, the rising of the living Christ from the tomb, conquering mortality.  It is toward the living Christ that the saints of God focus their attention, not to the instrument of His torture and very real but very temporary death.

All of the ordinances and sacraments of Christ’s church are founded on Christ’s promise, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (Matthew 10:10)  In baptism, the new Christian rises up out of the water to newness of life, and the gift of the Holy Ghost is bestowed by the laying on of hands to bring about a spiritual rebirth, in both cases death overcome.   The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, celebrated each Sunday in the church, points to Christ’s defeat of sin and death, and His victory over mortality.  Christ emphasized this when as the risen Messiah He presented the sacramental bread to the ancient Americans with the commandment to partake of the bread, “in remembrance of my body, which I have shown unto you” (3 Nephi 18:7), his very real and immortal, resurrected body as much as His body that was torn and killed on the cross. 

The highest ordinance that God offers to His children is marriage for time and eternity, whereby man and woman are united in a family to last forever, without end.  In those families, children are welcome and encouraged and seen as the glory of their parents. Genealogical records are sought out and preserved, as the promise of life and family connections extends forever back and continues forever onward.  No one is to be forgotten, because the promise of eternal life extends to all. 

Death is very real, but in the church of Jesus Christ death is no mystery, through Christ it has lost its sting.   After all, mortality is the exception in a universe where the eternity of life prevails. 

Of Baptisms for the Dead and the Feast of the Lord

I am not troubled by increased attention of the public to the doctrines of Jesus Christ.  I welcome it as an opportunity to invite them to partake of the riches of eternity that the Savior has placed upon the table of mankind for His brothers and sisters to delight in.  I am eager that all should pull up a chair:  the supply is unlimited and the table will never be too small nor the number of chairs inadequate.

I am reluctant, however, to allow the enemies of Christ to pollute the table or to corrupt what the Lord has given to us.  To humanity at large, many of the gifts of the Savior will seem new and powerfully at odds with the fare offered on the impoverished tables of the world.  It has always been so.  If they are to be of value to the disciples of Jesus Christ and those who would join them, they must be preserved in their purity. 

One of the great offerings from the Savior to the world through the church of Jesus Christ is the privilege of being baptized for release from our sins.  Through that marvelous ordinance we are able to make a promise to God to turn away from a life of sinning to a life of goodness and good will to all and eternal perfection of ourselves, leaving the former ways of dissipation in degrees small and great behind us.  In return, we are washed of our sins, and our days and ways of death are left buried underneath the wave as we arise from the water in newness of life.  We escape the consequences of our past sins by completely accepting the Savior Jesus Christ and receiving His suffering in place of our deserved punishment.  As Christ explained through modern prophets,

For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent. . . (Doctrine and Covenants 19:16)

That is a wonderful doctrine of change and peace of mind, by which the evils of the world can be overcome and peace prevail—today for any individual who chooses to embrace it, and for any society made up of such individuals.  It is all the more powerful because it is real, having been tested and demonstrated in millions of lives over the course of human history.

As a young teenager I could see the value of these doctrines, and I welcomed them.  I was particularly moved by the doctrine of extending these blessings of repentance and baptism to all, even to people who had little or no opportunity to hear or receive them during their mortal lives. 

While those who once walked where we walk now live in the world of spirits, awaiting the great resurrection of all, they continue to learn and associate with one another.  There they have the opportunity of learning of Jesus Christ and accepting His sacrifice for them, or rejecting it, as many have and do in mortality.  Those who accept the Savior’s vicarious sacrifice can make the same promise and commitment to newness of life by accepting vicarious baptisms performed by the living on their behalf in Christ’s Temples.  Thereby they obtain all of baptism’s changing and redemptive power.  Similarly, just as Christ and His vicarious suffering can be rejected in the world of spirits so can those vicarious baptisms by which the Savior is otherwise received.  As in mortality, free will is preserved and indeed enhanced by having the opportunity to accept or reject what otherwise would be beyond reach.  Even to a thirteen year old the fairness and justness of this doctrine was apparent.

What is not apparent to me several decades later is the logic of those who would object to this doctrine.  If you do not believe that it is a true doctrine of God, then at worst Christ’s disciples are wasting their time being baptized here on behalf of those who have died.  If the doctrine is false and the church of Jesus Christ is mistaken, then nothing that it does can reach beyond the grave and the dead remain out of touch from any in this life.  If, however, Jesus Christ is the Savior and indeed did suffer vicariously for the sins of any who would receive Him so that they might not suffer for themselves, and if the work offered in Christ’s Temples does reach beyond the grave, then this doctrine is a cause for rejoicing and partaking, among the many other rich things prepared for us and available on the Lord’s table of fat things.

And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.  (Isaiah 25:6)

Y’all come and pull up a chair. 

Of Holy Ordinances and Meaningful Lives

One of the benighted ideas that American society inherited from the benighted 1960s is the idea that marriage and other sacred religious ordinances are just meaningless ceremonies.  Forty years later the tracks of trouble and sorrow caused by this and related assaults on marriage should be readily apparent, yet the concept survives, supported particularly by people who see life as a carnival of selfish delights, where one grabs for all of the gratification that he can—and then dies.

That is after all a doctrine of isolation and death.  Sooner or later the commitmentless self-centered world view ends in death, leaving a heritage of broken kewpie dolls, regrettable memories, shallow relationships, and psychological emptiness.  In fact, periodically statistics show us that it shortens the mortality ride.  For those who follow that lifestyle—and most of America’s social leaders do and increasingly seek to impose it on everyone else—life seems short, cheap, and a despairing struggle for meaning of some sort.  When it is over there is a profound sense of loss, not only the loss in terms of the end of life but in terms of the loss of a lifetime that has been lived so bereft of redeeming value.

Many of the acolytes of this doctrine of death throughout the ages have been desperate to extend life but only to live it with more emptiness.  Others who are overcome along the way by the vacuum of meaning in the lifestyle have sought to end it all sooner than later, only to find that they have brought their empty life view with them into yet another life in the world of spirits, where they fearfully await the tallying up of their lives’ events into pitiful sums of value.

Our Heavenly Father instituted sacred ordinances from the beginning as tools to convey and reinforce meaning, each ordinance pointing to the Source of meaning in this life and in the eternal worlds to come. At the core of each sacred ordinance is a covenant and promise between God and man.  The form of each ordinance from God is designed to point the mind to Jesus Christ, whose atoning sacrifice in Gethsemane and on the cross gave meaning and value to this life.

Baptism, the first sacred ordinance offered to men and women in this life, is a useful example.   Through baptism we accept the vicarious suffering of Jesus Christ in our stead so that we do not have to suffer for our sins, in exchange for a covenant and promise that we will change our lives and refrain from sinning, a promise that we will turn away from the meaningless life of self-indulgence to a life rich in meaning and value focused on love, kindness, achievement, and development of virtue.  We are briefly “buried” in water, simultaneously burying our life of death and washing away its filthiness.  We arise from the water to newness of life, cleansed from our sins.

The marriage ordinance provided by God is an eternal pledge between husband and wife of perpetual faithfulness and dedication to the happiness of each other, as a foundation for living a joint life forever, a fitting and appropriate platform for bringing children into the family.  These covenants and promises are made by husband and wife to each other and also to God, whose power changes and unites hearts to reinforce faithfulness and to give these promises power that extends throughout eternity.  Taken altogether, this becomes a highly significant and holy ordinance with profound impact on the memory and the heart.  Compare that with the world’s version:  hey, want to live together?

Glorious versus pitiful.  The pattern is repeated for all of God’s ordinances versus men’s substitutes, the holy versus the hollow. 

Of Temples and Family Unity

Yesterday was a lovely Christmas season Saturday, with a smattering of early snow to add to the seasonal charm. Many people were busy about their tasks and errands related to the celebration of Christmas: shopping, craft making, decorating, parades, and performances. It was a joy to see worshiping, as hundreds of people were at the nearby Temple of God, participating in the Savior’s work of extending salvation to all who would receive it, both the living and the dead.

Yesterday I participated in ordinances through which families are united together throughout the eternities. Everything that the Savior Jesus Christ does, in the words of a wonderful teacher I met in Murcia, Spain, is para siempre, forever. While we live in the here and now, the here and now obtains meaning by being part of eternity. The Savior time and again and in many ways has sought to have us understand this.

The most important organization in the here and now, the family, is also the most important organization in heaven. The Savior would have our family relationships continue para siempre. So would most people I know.

That is the highest purpose of the Temples of the Lord, the eternal uniting of families. That means the uniting of families in the present, all across the family of man. The vows revealed by God Himself and administered in the present in the Lord’s Temples continue unbroken beyond the grave, as eternal as heaven.

Husband and wife and the children, too, are linked in that loving association forever. Through the linking of the children the generations are joined from the beginning of time until time becomes eternity. As the son of my parents I am linked to my father and mother. They each are linked to their parents, and on to the first parents. No one is forgotten or denied the opportunity to come to Christ and through Him to be united with all generations past, present, and future in one family of all who accept God as their Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, as their Savior.

Fundamentally, that is why Christ came to earth two thousand years ago, to save mankind, and especially to save us as families, literally part of the united family of God the Father. Yesterday hundreds were laboring in our local Temple, and around the world thousands in the other Temples of Christ, worshiping the Savior by continuing His work to unite and thereby save the family units of today and the past. That work will continue until the Savior Himself shall say, “It is done.” That is a lovely Christmas celebration.

Of Temples and Homes

In a few weeks I will witness the marriage of my youngest daughter. The simple but sacred ceremony will be held in a Latter-day Saint Temple, where she and her husband will be united forever, never to be separated, not even by death. Our Heavenly Father desires our families to be forever and has arranged for the family associations to continue throughout the eternities. The union of a man and woman in the bonds of eternal marriage is the most sacred ceremony (or sacrament) performed on earth. The consequences have enormous importance (despite the efforts of popular culture and other loud voices to cheapen marriage and the marital relationship), and for that reason the Lord has asked for the building of sacred places away from the ordinary walks of life, where these ceremonies can be held in a setting befitting their importance.

A Temple is a holy place. As such it is designed to encourage people to aspire to live and act so as to be holy themselves in order to enter. A Temple is set apart to be a place of peace were God can seem nearer and heaven a closer reality. Careful efforts are made to keep the mundane, the crass, the vulgar, and even the ordinary outside of the Temple’s walls. Anyone may enter a Temple who makes promises and demonstrates in his walk of life a commitment to living a higher set of standards. These promises include dedication to Jesus Christ and a discipleship revealed in service, obedience to the Ten Commandments and other commandments from God, chastity, honesty, and a willingness to make self-improvement a constant way of life.

In a world where evil masquerades as good, where truth is taught to be a dangerous concept, where the contemporary culture applauds instant gratification that cheapens all things of value, a Temple stands as a beacon of truth, a preserver of value, and an encouragement to all who would seek to approach God. It is a refuge where the kind, the good, and the gentle can find rest, and where the temporary merges into and becomes part of the eternal.

Such a place provides the perfect setting for a man and a woman to begin their partnership that extends beyond this life and into the eternities. And it becomes a place where they may often return and find a model of the conditions to promote in their own homes as they make their homes sacred places.

When the Savior gave instructions for building His first Temple in modern times, He called for it to be “a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:119). So the Temples are, and so can our homes become.