Perspective

Good morning! It is a lovely day out. The sun is shining, the temperature is nice (remembering that it is still winter and there is still snow on the ground), boys are outside waiting for the bus, and Amena did not miss the bus. Not a bad start to a day or a week.

Saturday I did some reading that was quite interesting. Elder Russell M. Nelson said, “The aging process is also a gift from God, as is death. The eventual death of your mortal body is essential to God’s great plan of happiness. Why? Because death will allow your spirit to return home to Him. From an eternal perspective, death is only premature for those who are not prepared to meet God.”

That gives some food for thought. If death is premature only for those not prepared to meet God, then babies and young children are probably the most ready because they most recently came from Him. Our view seems to be, “Oh, the poor child, he/she had so much potential.” With an eternal perspective, don’t we all have eternal potential?

When I think of the deaths in my own family, we’ve really experienced a somewhat large gamut. We have Papa, who was 85, down to Daniel, who was 14, and in between Robert Lee, my dad, Uncle Mick. “Death is only premature for those who are not prepared to meet God.” I’m pretty sure Papa was ready. I’m pretty sure Daniel was ready. I’m pretty sure my dad was ready. I wasn’t close enough to Robert Lee and Uncle Mick to have an opinion if they were ready or not but in some way, they must have been.

Death is the flip side of the same coin as birth. Each is a passage to a new realm. When those we love die, we grieve. We miss them. Our lives are forever changed by them. When we are born, are there spirits who grieve for us because they miss us? Did we forever change the lives of those with whom we lived? Believing as I do, I think that in that existence we knew more of the eternal perspective than we do in this one. Because of this, I think that while there are those who miss us, they know that one day we will be together again.

I believe that. If I didn’t, I would lay down right now and die. Actually, if I didn’t believe that, I would have never gotten up from that hard table in the emergency room in Sioux Falls—with the death of Daniel, my life would have been over. But it isn’t. Life goes on, even in this sphere of existence, and one day I will be with Daniel, and my dad, and Papa, and all those who have gone before.

I am afraid this is going to be yet another relatively short post. While there is much that I could write about, there is little that I really want to. Sooooo, have a fantastical day!