Dear Family,
It has been a long time since I wrote an Eternal View. I know that some of you are still looking forward to writing yours, but I wanted to write to you all and express some of the feelings of my heart again to you.
It was such a wonderful day when you all came to be with us for Grandpa's funeral. I'm sure that all of you had a roller coaster of emotions, as I did, reflecting on Grandpa's life and the way that he had impacted each one of you on different occasions and in different ways. I'm sure that each of us had feelings unique to just us. Of course, I spent more time with him than any of you and so the well of my feelings ran deep. But I will have to confess that not all of my feelings were centered on my Dad, even though it was the day we celebrated the goodness of his life. Rather, it was my feelings of gratitude for each one of you that occupied a big part of my heart on those two days. As you walked through the line during the viewings and we embraced; as I looked at each of you during the funeral; listened to the girls participate in the singing and then watched as you mingled with family and loved ones at the gravesite in Logan, my cup, as it were, completely ran over with such deep feelings of joy and gratitude because of your goodness, your love for each other and for extended family; your faith in the Plan of Happiness and your commitment to our Father in Heaven and the absolute knowledge we all have and hold to that because of priesthood ordinances our family is bound together for all eternity. My love for you was and is beyond my ability to adequately express. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your faith and love for God and Jesus Christ that will bring all of us back together again after death into eternal life, forever sealed in the New and Everlasting covenant of family life.
Those feelings were somewhat punctuated again this week in the temple with two different experiences that I had. I work with a wonderful brother on Wednesday whose sister married one of my good friends that I grew up with in Lewiston. So we had some connection during our days at Utah State when my friend was dating his sister and we were all students at the university. A friend in his ward who I work with on Tuesday told me that this brother was carrying a heavy heart. His youngest daughter, just 32 years old, had been taken to the hospital and had an emergency c-section to deliver her baby who was a month early. During the surgery, it was discovered that she had a spot on her uterus. Concerned, the doctors then did a full scale scan on her and discovered that she had stage four cancer in her lungs, bones and other organs of her body. They gave her ten months to live. So on Wednesday I put my arm around her father and told him that I had been told of the heavy heart he was carrying. We had a sobering and heartfelt conversation as he told how the family had prayed and was yearning for a miracle in his daughter's behalf. But then he said, "Sometimes things like this is what life gives us. But she is faithful to God and His church. Her testimony of eternal families is rock solid, as is ours. And so while our hearts are heavy, Christ has given us a blessing of peace and to that we cling." As he spoke, the witness came to me again that it is only Christ who can give that kind of peace in the midst of hard trials that come to us, including the death of a loved one.
I had another experience on Wednesday that sobered me as well. This was one of great contrast to the one I just shared. Last Friday we were in Logan and went with Paul and Arla and Jacob to the temple for Jacob's endowment. And I will say that times like that are just an extension of the sweetness of the previous Friday at Grandpa's funeral. We loved being with Jacob and seeing his goodness and preparation for receiving the most sacred of all ordinances except for the sealing of a man and his wife. Again, our cup was full.
When I walked into the locker room after the session, I ran into another brother from Bountiful that I work with on Wednesday in the temple here. We visited for a minute as to why we were both in Logan and then said goodbye. Then on Wednesday when he saw me he just wanted to talk. We talked about what a blessing it was to be with a grandson in the temple. He then told me that he had done that many times. He is probably in his early eighties. His conversation wandered to the great youth we have in the Church and then he told me that he has been serving as a patriarch for nearly twenty years and had the opportunity to see the goodness of the youth as they come for their blessings. Then for some reason, he sobered and told me about his own children--seven of them. He told me that they were all faithful except one. This one was a son, a returned missionary and a former bishop who recently had read on social media about the prophet Joseph Smith having plural wives and the Church just now becoming open about it. He has left the church and cannot be reasoned with even when presented with written material that shows the Church has been "open" and has made available to anyone willing to do some reading that they acknowledged Joseph Smith's part in the practice ever since 1852. In actuality, people who are turned by what they read on social media are likely more influenced by the responses to a post than by the post itself. It is a wonder that they will believe anything they read on social media and pay no attention to what has been published for many decades, as though what we see on social media is the end all of all truth.
At any rate, I thought of the contrast in the "heart response" of these two brethren. The first, who is facing the prospect of losing his daughter, a young mother to death, and yet having a heart that has been given a deep peace because of his sure knowledge of the plan of salvation and the eternal promises given to the faithful. And the second father whose heart aches without peace, even though he has the same knowledge of the plan of salvation, because he knows that the promises associated with the plan are promises that come only to those who are faithful to the covenants that they have made with the author of the plan.
I know that Satan is desperate for he knows his time of being able to influence the sons and daughters of God is short. He is miserable--absolutely and totally miserable, and wants all men to be miserable like unto himself. He reigns over his dominion and has great power to deceive.
As your father and grandfather, I pray that you will always keep an Eternal View and always focus on the great and marvelous promises that God has given to those who never lose vision of who they are as His sons and daughters, bound by priesthood covenant to Him and to those they love and are sealed to for eternity. My gratitude for all of you is indeed a cup running over.
How I love you!!
Dad
