CONCLUSION
We have shown the house of God is in order. There is true and perfect equality between God’s beloved sons and daughters, though a few have yet to see these things clearly. Only together as husbands and wives will we find the eternal happiness we seek.
Calls to preside and follow in the Church are calls to serve one another as equals. Charity, the pure love of Christ, is the grand key to all our interrelationships. We have come to appreciate the glorious design of God in endowing sons and daughters with unique gifts and assigning special tasks to each.
We see the synergistic power of different parts with different capacities being sealed into glorious wholes to bless, benefit and exalt. We find joy and peace in our assigned labors as we all enjoy the powers of the priesthood and humbly submit to the authority thereof, not by constraint but willingly, knowing that order is calculated to prosper and bless all equally in righteousness.
If ever a woman or man had cause to rejoice, it is in the perfect portrait of heaven painted by the beloved prophet of the Restoration, Joseph Smith. The eternal promises of the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ are extended equally to loved sons and daughters of God.
When people think of great faith and great power, they often speak of parting seas, moving mountains or even creating whole planets. They think of the incredible power it would take to create a world and they stand in awe at the very thought.
Mountains and planets come and go, however. The eternal souls of men and women who dwell on the planets are priceless. The power to create billions of planets from space dust to revolve in all their glory in the infinite expanse of the sidereal heavens veritably pales into insignificance compared to the incomprehensible power to create the miracle we call life.
The powers of procreation are the supreme gift of God given universally to men and women. The power and privilege to shape and form, to influence and mold life into gloriously productive, noble and happy beings is the greatest power ever exerted by any living entity. There are no other authorities or powers in the priesthood that even begin to compare with the exalted priesthood powers and privileges of eternal procreation and parenthood. No greater power exists than the inherent power and authority of a righteous mother.
Even the infinite atonement itself, the very centerpiece of revealed religion, would be impossible without the peerless powers of a woman to give life. The Eternal Father in all his power and glory still required a mortal wife whose powers of motherhood could produce the body of our Savior, the body he would later sacrifice willingly and lovingly in the scourging, mockery and humiliation of Gethsemane and Golgotha. Even at the end of his atoning ordeal as he hung suffering on the cross for our eternal salvation, his last expressions concerned his mother in his petition to John to care for her, and his Father when he said, “Father into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
How tragically ironic that men and women so often overlook, ignore or even desert home and family to run to and fro in the world seeking the petty powers of titles and offices, riches and fame of a fallen Babylon. The paradox is so exquisite! Let us never squander our vast eternal treasure in the worlds ahead for want of a penny’s worth of faith today.
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