The House of the Lord

As I was reading Doctrine and Covenants Section 124 in preparation for class this week, I was reminded of my pleasant experience this weekend, but first a little background.  D&C 124 is where the Lord commands the saints to build the Nauvoo, Illinois temple.  This is only the second temple that was able to be successfully finished in this dispensation.  The Nauvoo temple allowed for saints to receive their temple ordinances in the fulness that we now understand them today.  Since its dedication in 1841, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has 128 temples in operation.

One temple that is on the verge of operation in the Draper, Utah temple.  When dedicated, along with the Ocquirrh Mountain Temple, there will then be 4 temples in the Salt Lake Valley alone.  I have been able to watch this temple be built from the ground up.  Driving between Provo and Salt Lake since my freshman year of college, I have watched the structure come to life.  During the later part of Spring '08 I was driving around in Draper with my cousin.  We sort of stumbled across the temple, and this was the first time I was able to see the exterior finished.  As far as I was concerned, at the time, the temple was finished and beautiful.  Little did I know how exquisite the inside would be when it actually would be finished.  My second experience with this temple was seeing it at night, illuminated for the first time.  A friend and I were driving out that way, and I was just stunned when I looked up on the hill and saw it.  This was sort of a problem, since I was the one driving at the time...  Its grandeur was magnificent.  I loved it.  Last, but not least, this past Friday I was able to go to the open house, and actually walk through the temple.  It was beautiful!  The amount of time, and effort that went into the inside is jaw dropping.  The celestial room is simply exquisite.  Every part of the temple, is remarkable, no matter what ordinance is performed in that part.  

I think the best part of all of this is that I know, one day I will be able to receive my endowment, and participate in the wonderful ordinances and education that go on in the temple.  

Love

In doing these blogs, I try to go through the week looking for a common theme.  I looked and I looked this week, but the only thing I could come up with was love.  Now this isn't bad at all, and it mainly stems from the fact that Valentine's Day was three days ago.  However, me being me, I don't like to talk about anything around those lines 'just cause,' but I decided to take the plunge this week.  

There's all sorts of different kinds of love out there, and from what I here English is a unique language to express your love in.  There is love for pizza, love for friends, love for family, love for a significant other, and so on.  Apparently though, in most other languages each different type of love has a different word making it easy to distinguish between the different ideas.  English doesn't facilitate that.  Yes there are similar words such as fondness, and like, but not different forms of love.  Let me expand upon this idea with a short story:

My senior year of high school I was in A.P. English Literature.  Around this same time of year we were ironically reading Shakespeare's sonnet, funny coincidence...I know.  Well on Valentine's day we read some love related poem/sonnet and then discussed love for a little bit.  The assignment was to create Valentine's and finish the statement, "Love is..."  Some of them were funny and suiting to those who wrote them, such as "Love is as eternal as pi (3.14...)."  I think mine was something to the affect of "Love is always smiling."  However the one that has struck me the most and still sticks with me to this day is one by a friend of mine.  Although she isn't a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, she is and outstanding person who has a spiritual background.  She wrote, "Love is perfect pain."  I don't know what she meant by it or where her idea for it stemmed from, but it has stuck with me.  

Why you may ask?  Because Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior suffered a perfect pain for each and ever human to walk this earth when he atoned for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He was a perfect lamb, spotless before God.  It is through his spiritual pain, emotional pain, and physical pain that He, Jesus Christ, gave us the ability to choose to live with our Father in Heaven again.  The pure love that Christ displayed throughout that night, and His whole ministry for that matter is called charity.  It is this same charity that cause the Lord to say the following to Oliver Cowdery, and David Whitmer in Doctrine and Covenants 18:10-11, "Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God;  For, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh;  wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him."

The worth of every soul is great in the sight of God.  Each and every one of us is of great worth to our Father in Heaven.  What a blessing that is to know that Lord loves and cares for each one of us so deeply.  It is unmatched.

What then can we do in return?  First then, we can learn to love our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  We do this through learning about them and beginning to know them through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Then in Doctrine and Covenants 42:29 we find the charge, "If thou lovest me thou shalt serve me and keep all my commandments."  A simple phrase that packs the key to eternity.  Serve the Lord.  We do this by serving others and building the Kingdom of God on earth.  Second, "keep all my commandments."  We can't pick and choose and sift out the ones we don't want, but we choose to keep them all.  This doesn't mean we will be perfect, but we try our best, and when we don't hit perfection (pretty much always) there is the atonement to make up for the rest.  Going back to D&C 18:11, the Lord "suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him."  When we fall short, or make a mistake, that is when we repent.  We use Jesus's perfect pain, and perfect love for us to help us back up to where we need to be. 

The love of our Savior runs deep and long, for eternity to be quite blunt.  He will never stop loving you, and is waiting for you to start loving Him.  Take this opportunity to evaluate your life, see the love of the Lord and help others see it to.  Hopefully your Valentine's day was as good as mine and you are able to see the love of the Lord manifest in your daily life.  

Time and All Eternity

On April 3, 1836 Elijah returned to the Kirtland temple and restored the priesthood to its fulness with the return of the sealing keys on earth.  (see Doctrine and Covenants section 110)  It is this particular part of the priesthood power that allows for me to be sealed to my parents for time and all eternity.  

Many LDS children are "Born in the Covenant."  This means that the parents of the child were born to parents who were sealed in the Latter-Day Saints Temples previous to the birth of the child.  However, I was not.  Now my parents were married in the temple, but since I was adopted I was not born in the covenants.  When I was six months old, I had the opportunity to be taken to the temple with my parents and sealed to them.  Now the ordeals surrounding that day are completely another story, but I am so grateful for that day.  That sealing is a welding link (D&C 128:18) between my family here on earth and the generations before and after me.  

It is this same power of sealing that allows for couples to be sealed to on another for time and all eternity.  It is this ordinance, when sealed by the power of the Holy spirit, that allows for people to reach the highest degree of the celestial kingdom.  (D&C 131:1-4)  This step is so crucial to forming families here on earth.  "The Family:  A Proclamation to the World" addresses this issue in saying, 

"In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which  His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life.  The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave.  Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God for families to be united eternally."

I was reading a series of articles in the Ensign this month on adoption.  They were entitled, "The Gift of Adoption."  It gave the perspective the birth mother, the birth father, the grandparents, and the child.  These articles are a lovely montage explaining the principles of the atonement, celestial marriage, the plan of happiness, and yes, the importance of the sealing keys.  These are all principles that are near and dear to my heart and important principles in the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

The small miracle of a baby, at the right time in the right place, can teach so many fundamental gospel truths and touch the lives of many people.  I just gives me all the more reason to do something good with my life and be the person my Heavenly Father wants me to be.  

Who's on the Lord Side Who?

So I am taking a genealogy class.  I partly took it because my mom once told me I should, and I partly took it because I was curious.  Well 3 weeks into the class and I already feel like I am drowning.  It has more homework, things to memorize, and all sorts of other fun stuff than just about all my other classes combined.  Now I am not complaining, but merely stating a fact.  However, I find it fully intriguing that my classes this semester overlap in content, a lot.  In family history, we were talking about the coming of Elijah to the Kirtland temple in 1936 and him restoring the sealing keys to the earth.  Well sure enough we have talked about the same thing in my Doctrine and Covenants class, but here is where the story comes...

Last week I had to make a four generation chart for my family history class.  I sort of left it until the last minute assuming the lab would be open because the engineering labs are open 24/7.  Nope,  I got there at 8:00 pm, and the lab had closed at 5:00.  For most people this wouldn't be a problem because they could just download the windows based paf (personal ancestral file) program and do the work from home.  Unfortunately I have a mac, and that just doesn't work.  I downloaded the program from a flash drive and thought I was running it off that.  However 30 minutes into my work I see note pop up telling me not to download programs onto the computer.  Well by the time I got it to go away, I looked at my file and had lost my grandpa's entire line, which was at least 14 generations worth of work.  Amazingly I was able to remain calm, and just dropped the assignment for the night.  

However it got me thinking, that was something that happened me to discourage me from pushing the work of the Lord forward in the spirit world.  I would almost be as so bold to say that it was the devil screwing with the computer...grr.  There is opposition in all things. (2 Nephi 2:11)  The devil is a true force of evil in this world.  He is out there and he is real.  We need to do all we can to stay on the Lord's side of the line.  The battle of good and evil is a real thing, like or not.  Now is the time to choose if which side of the war we are fighting on.  When we return to Heavenly Father we will be able to agree with Paul and say, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:"  (2 Timothy 4:7).  I hope that I will be able to say that I have kept the faith, and done all I could to stand up for the Lord's side and win this epic battle of good vs. evil.  

(PS I did end up getting my homework finished the next morning because I am sure you are all wondering ;) )