Death and Resurrection - John 5:23-29

I have to be honest, the last couple of days have been the worst of my life. We had a exceptionally devastating family tragedy and it’s really made me question my faith to the core. This morning I told Jesus that he’s an a-hole, and even though I don’t really believe that, I’m just so hurt. When I was a teenager, my boyfriend’s mom told me, “God isn’t so small that he won’t let you be mad at him.” That was really powerful for me because it gave me permission to be angry at my circumstances as part of the grieving process. I had to ask myself if what I “believe” is really good enough anymore, I had to know if I could stand in the face of what happened and say “this is what God wanted to happen,” and if I was willing to accept that and move forward in my life with my faith. I have had very few moments like that in my life, where I was actively confronted with “can I stay with the gospel in light of what has happened to me personally?” I had to decide if I wanted to keep going to church and saying my prayers and studying the scriptures, or if I just wanted to give that up. Of course, on the way to work I listened to the January 2017 Ensign article entitled “Prophetic Principles of Faithfulness,” in which Elder C. Scott Grow quotes D&C 128: 22,24 saying, “Brethren (and sisters), shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage,… and on, on to the victory!... Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” He continues, “What might that offering be that you individually can give to God! It is that one gift He would never require of you. It is the offering of your will to submit to His will. It is to lay your agency on the altar of personal sacrifice. One of the Lectures on Faith, prepared by the early Brethren in this dispensation, states: ‘A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.’ Your agency is the one thing that is truly yours that you can give as an offering to God. By volunteering your will to His will, you will become like Him.” I thought about Joseph Smith saying this as he had personally had several children either born dead or die very young and I thought that my situation wasn’t nearly as bad as his was, and he still never turned his back on the Lord or the gospel, and if he could stay strong, then surely I could too.

The next article entitled, “Trusting in the Lord’s Timing,” talks about the experience of a young female returned missionary who was discouraged when she returned home and found that not all of her righteous desires happened right away. She says, “I had been comparing my circumstances with those of others, wondering if I had been forgotten. In that moment, a wave of peace washed over me. I could picture a loving, merciful God listening to my doubts and wanting me to have the patience and faith to see that He hadn’t forgotten me… This and other righteous desires were fulfilled in the Lord’s timing. If the course of events had happened in the way I had wanted them to, I wouldn’t have learned to rely not only on the Lord’s plan for me but also on His timing. I also think it would have been much harder for the lord to bless me in the ways He knew would ultimately make me the most happy. And those blessings have always been something significantly better than what I thought I wanted.” I thought “how could losing this baby “ultimately make me the most happy?” And this is something that I could only consider in the eternal perspective. These babies clearly have a work to do on the other side that is significant and in the end can I be happy knowing that they are bringing the gospel to those who never had it? Could I be happy knowing that they are fulfilling some role in the preaching of the gospel that only they could perform? Could I be happy knowing that perhaps some families could accept their temple blessings now and be together forever now because they received the gospel from my nephews? Would that be enough for me? Could I look at the great works that they are probably doing on the other side and say “it was worth it to lose them because of the work they performed?”

Then I started to read the scriptures that I am on as far as this blog goes and again, the Lord is right there teaching me. John 5:24-29 says, “Verily, Verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, Verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself…For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” I think that most people look at these verse from the perspective of the dead who need to hear the “voice of the Son of God,” but I looked at it from the perspective of the ones supplying the missionaries to do the preaching and that is when I first started thinking about what the boys might be doing while they are on the other side. These verses reminded me that we are engaged in an eternal work and that the gospel needs to be preached on both sides of the veil. I was also reminded of the promise of the resurrection, and that we would get our boys back and we would get to raise them and be a family again. The IM quotes Elder D. Todd Christofferson as teaching, “While yet in life, Jesus prophesied that He would also preach to the dead. Peter tells us this happened in the interval between the Savior’s Crucifixion and Resurrection. President Joseph F. Smith witnessed in vision that the Savior visited the spirit world and ‘from among the righteous (spirits)… organized his forces and appointed messengers, clothes with power and authority, and commissioned them to go forth and carry the light of the gospel to them that were in darkness.” The IM also quotes Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin as teaching, “When the Savior rose from the tomb, He did something no one had ever done. He did something no on else could do. He broke the bonds of death, not only for Himself but for all who have ever lived- the just and the unjust.” Section 76 is a results of visions received by Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon while pondering John 5:29, and the IM also quotes Elder Merrill J. Bateman as teaching, “Unlike mortals who inherit the seeds of death from both parents, Jesus was born of a mortal mother but an immortal Father. The seeds of death received from Mary meant that He could die, but the inheritance from His Father gave Him infinite life, which meant death was a voluntary act.”

The last couple of days have been very soul searching for me, and I’ve learned a lot and I am grateful. Finally, this morning on my way to work, the Lord taught me some important, but kind lessons through the January 2017 Ensign article entitled, “With all They Getting, Get Understanding.” It’s an excellent article, but the message for me was basically, in this case and at all times, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding.” I don’t know why these babies were taken, but Jesus does, and I need to trust that and move on with faith and happiness. It was really a beautiful lesson.