1. It goes without saying that the Prophet Joseph Smith's personal experience with death certainly left him so capable of empathizing with others as they experienced loss. Sometimes I find it hard to related to their situation. I have experienced so little of death in my life. Those deaths I have experienced were those that were not very close to me; Not like immediate family members in the family I grew up in or the family I have now. Not even the grandparents I lived close to growing up or the cousins I spent so much time with. I suspect that this topic will become so much more real to me over the next few years. Were the people of Jospeh Smith's times more accustomed to death because they saw it more frequently and up close? Even still the Prophet understood the pain and anguish of losing the association of a loved one.
2. The gospel principles that bring hope and comfort are those that teach about the afterlife. I have learned that we will be in a spirit world of peace and joy until we are resurrected. Even more important I believe that the repentance and forgiveness I experience combined with the templed ordinances I have participated in and hold to, will allow me to experience exaltation when I am resurrected. And I will again be with those that I love. I'm confident I will enjoy the association of many wonderful people that I would have loved could I have known them in this life such as great grandparents and so forth.
3. I know I must repent often and seek the Lord's forgivenes. I feel so strongly that I need to return to the temple more frequently. In these ways if I were called to pass on I would be ready.
Lately I have been thinking about what I could do to prepare myself to be a mission president. I have no aspiration to even be one, but I have seen the kind of people that serve missions and I do admire them. And I frequently think that if I were doing all I could to prepare as if I were going to go I would find myself becoming those people that I admire. Is it any different to want to be that prepared to leave this world? It makes me realize that more than spiritually there are other temporal things I would like to do so that my family could continue on with out me with as little struggle as possible.
4. A parent that has already experienced the joy of raising children will find it terribly difficult to hear the principles of the gospel and forego any grieving. However, those gospel principles if we really come to believe them and feel the truth of them, they will give us proper perspective about how we should feel for these children taken from us prematurely. The idea that that child would be given back for us to raise in the millenium struck me as something so joyful I couldn't really understand it. I don't think I have felt this way about this teaching before I read and thought about the Prophets words.
5. Heavenly Father controls life and death. When someone leaves us we will mourn to varying degrees, but what if we had the same feeling around their passing that we do when the Lord calls someone to be our bishop, stake president or prophet. Is not death just a new call from the Lord?
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