The Greatest Love Story in the Universe

Today is Valentine's Day. It's the season of love. We spoke yesterday in our sacrament meeting at the request of the bishopric. They asked us to address the topic of eternal marriage and eternal life. 

So that started me thinking about what the greatest love stories in the universe might be. Would we think about a famous couple in history like Cleopatra and Mark Antony? Or Robin Hood and Maid Marian? Or maybe the fictional characters of Romeo and Juliet? Or Joseph and Emma Smith? Or how about John and Abigail Adams? What about Abraham and Sarah? Or even Dave and Patsy?

Then I looked a little deeper into the ramifications of love. It has to be more than platitudes in cards and candy shaped like hearts, or boxes of chocolates and dozens of roses. The greatest love of all involves a willingness to sacrifice all for the ones we love. If you're me, it could mean making a bed with way too many throw pillows on it. It means forsaking all others and focusing our affections on those for whom we have such natural affinity that we will willingly give all for them regardless of the cost.

Given those simple thoughts, I have to conclude that the greatest love story in the universe involves the love our Father in Heaven exhibits for each of His children in offering to them exaltation through the intervention and atonement of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Over the span of a lifetime it has settled on my heart that the magnitude of that gift is truly incalculable. Through Him we overcome spiritual and physical death. Would any of us like the role of being the Father and standing by as He watches His Son brutally tortured and nailed on a crude wooden cross and hung to die while bystanders ridiculed and tormented Him? Or would any of us volunteer to take the Savior’s place as the One crucified for all the sins of all the children of God? The cost seems too enormous to pay, either as the Father or the Son. But each paid that cost for us.

When we are born into mortality we come as William Wordsworth expressed it:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

          Hath had elsewhere its setting

               And cometh from afar;

          Not in entire forgetfulness,

          And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

               From God, who is our home:

We lived as premortal spirits with our Father in Heaven. We knew Him. We spoke with Him. We were tutored by Him. Pure and innocent we were, but we yearned for a mortal experience where we could take upon ourselves a physical body and learn to distinguish for ourselves between good and evil. We knew there were risks, and we knew there would be hardships to endure, but none of that deterred us. We knew since the fall of Adam and Eve that a Savior and Redeemer would be provided to allow us to repent and do better day by day if our faith in Jesus Christ were in evidence. We knew we would be free to choose. We were among the seraphic hosts of heaven who shouted for joy when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden into the lone and dreary world. As we grow and develop, experiencing all the challenges, trials and temptations of mortality, we can be forgiven if we wonder now what everyone in heaven was shouting for joy about.

We progress to the day of baptism, when we pass through a “gate” and enter into the covenant path that stretches out before us as far as the eye can see ahead. We hear it referred to as “the strait (or straight) and narrow path” and we are anxious to walk in light and truth. (See 2 Nephi 31:15-21).We are given the promise of a spiritual guide, even the Holy Ghost, the third member of the Godhead, as our constant companion to help us discern between truth and error. We stumble along the path in spite of our gift of the Holy Ghost, and we are surprised at how weak we are in our mortal bodies, but we get back up and continue walking in faith.

As we fail at this or that endeavor in life, we are reminded of the blessed assurance that we are redeemed in this world as soon as we repent. But the atonement is not reserved alone for sinners. We can find comfort in the days of our fears, our anxiety and our disappointments of all sorts. We are promised divinity lies ahead of us in spite of ourselves or the unkindness of others. So we struggle on, at times feeling all alone, in the hope deliverance can be obtained.

We wonder how we, so feeble and pathetic, can possibly be worthy of such heavenly intervention, but we grow and develop until we meet our eternal companion and we go to the temple of the Lord together. We are amazed at how marvelously delicious this other person is, as though he or she was the part we had been missing that now makes us complete. Truly, this is love, we think. There can be nothing better than this, we assert.

We marry in God’s temple. We are promised eternal life, or the life which God our Father lives. Indeed, “Eternal” is one of His names. We can live “Eternal’s life” if we are faithful to the gospel covenants we make. We begin this step in our progress by taking upon ourselves the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. We are “sealed” to one another. I love that word “sealed”. There is something so permanent in the word. We are sealed for time and for all eternity with power to come forth in the morning of the first resurrection, clothed in glory, immortality and eternal lives. 

We are also admonished to “cleave” unto one another in marriage and to become “one flesh.” We are commanded, “Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else.” (D&C 42:22). Jacob also promises, "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, I beseech of you in words of soberness that ye would repent, and come with full purpose of heart, and cleave unto God as he cleaveth unto you." (Jacob 6:5). “Wherefore, it is lawful that he should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh, and all this that the earth might answer the end of its creation.” (D&C 49:16). We are told if we are faithful we “shall inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths.” (D&C 132:19). 

But the sealing is conditional, conditioned upon being sealed by the holy spirit of promise. (D&C 132:19). None of us can deceive the Holy Ghost. When he places his seal of approval on our sealing, then it is binding. The promises in the sealing ceremony are big ideas. There is nothing small about it. There are no half-measures. What more is there beyond what God promises - that we will become in time joint-heirs with Christ possessing ALL that the Father hath.

Back in December, Patsy and I were on Temple Square. We looked down into the gaping chasm surrounding the Salt Lake Temple as it is thoroughly being renovated. The banner on the fence proclaims, "Thinking Big." I looked at the scope of the current project and I thought, "Yes, President Nelson is indeed thinking big here." Then just as quickly I had the thought that President Brigham Young must have also been thinking big back in his day. What in the world would have possessed him to consider such an enormous task of building that temple in the middle of nowhere? But Brigham had a vision. He saw that magnificent structure standing where he designated with his cane that it should stand, and they set to work. For forty years those early pioneers toiled at the task without any readily available materials, tools or engineering expertise. Brigham was thinking big, indeed!

Brigham described his vision of the Salt Lake Temple:

This I do know - there should be a Temple built here. I do know it is the duty of this people to commence to build a Temple. Now, some will want to know what kind of a building it will be. Wait patiently, brethren, until it is done, and put forth your hands willingly to finish it. I know what it will be. I am not a visionary man, neither am I given much to prophesying. When I want any of that done I call on brother Heber - he is my Prophet, he loves to prophesy, and I love to hear him. I scarcely ever say much about revelations, or visions, but suffice it to say, five years ago last July I was here, and saw in the Spirit the Temple not ten feet from where we have laid the Chief Corner Stone. I have not inquired what kind of a Temple we should build. Why? Because it was represented before me. I have never looked upon that ground, but the vision of it was there. I see it as plainly as if it was in reality before me. Wait until it is done. (Brigham Young, April 6, 1853 General Conference, Journal of Discourses, Vol.1, pp.132 - 133).

Then I recalled how details of the creation are given in each endowment session in the temples. It's not merely His prophets who are big thinkers, the God of Heaven, Jehovah and Michael were also big thinkers. There is nothing small about their plans for us. We are promised that all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are ours if we follow the covenant path leading to exaltation and eternal life. These are all big ideas, much bigger than we are capable of obtaining on our own. The Abrahamic Covenant is summarized in the Pearl of Great Price, (Abraham 2:8-13). How many stars in the heavens, and how many sands on the shores? Big ideas if you're numbering your posterity in eternity.

And then the children begin arriving in our home. They bring joy unsullied and uncompromised. They grow and eventually they leave us behind to take up their life journeys. We are sad to see them go, but we are also exhilarated to see them take their place in the world without us. Sometimes we see them stumble and sometimes they are saddled with health challenges and they suffer often for years without relief. We see our families sometimes bruised, broken, fractured, and we wonder how any of these promises can possibly be ours to claim. And then we remember that we worship our Redeemer. He mends broken things. We must trust in Him.

And we can pray for them, and we can enlist the faith of those faithful saints who attend the temples and offer prayers for their well-being. We can extend our love and affection. We often wish we could ease those burdens and erase that suffering. In short, we become more and more like our Father in Heaven as we pursue parenthood in mortality, preparing the physical bodies for the spirits created by God and Jesus Christ. (See Moses 1:39). We participate as partners in the creative process by creating the mortal bodies for the eternal spirits of our Father in Heaven to possess: “For behold, this is my work and my glory - to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” There can be no immortality or eternal life without first obtaining a physical body from our earthly parents.

Truly, there is nothing greater as a demonstration of a Father’s love for His children, than holding out for us an inheritance that spans beyond this life. We can take nothing of this earth’s treasures with us when we die, but in the dying we step forward into the eternal realms ahead and a vast realization of blessings beyond imagination. The magnitude of our blessings is on a scale as unimaginable as staring down into the excavation around the Salt Lake Temple and wondering how any of it can ever be put back together again. Brigham Young had the vision of that building, and so does President Russell M. Nelson. 

How can there be any greater love story than this?