Week 22 - Looking Back

Looking back over last week -- a week in which we didn't meet a single time as a seminary class -- there have still been lessons taught -- very vivid and personal ones that should make us so grateful for our understanding of the "great plan of happiness" (Alma 42:8). Four of our class members watched sorrowfully as their grandfather transitioned from this earthly existence. The rest of us feel sad that a good friend and a good example is gone from our presence. A man who served faithfully and cheerfully to help build the kingdom in this area ever since he and his wife opened their door to the missionaries and their hearts to eternal truths. Arthur J. Hale passed through the veil on February 16, 2010. As difficult as it has been to let him go, it's a wonderful thing to think about his indomitable spirit that is now unencumbered by a body that became too weak to go on any longer.

And then, in the middle of all that, new life -- a brand new baby girl by the name of Kelsi Lyn Caten, sister to another member of our seminary class. Life really does go on. And with our spiritual eyes, we see that it never really had a beginning and it certainly has no end.

How thankful I am for my understanding, limited as it is, of "the plan of our God" (2 Nephi 9:13). The most important questions anyone ever asks are these: Where did I come from? Why am I here? What am I to do to get to where I want to go? I think almost everyone asks those questions at some point in her/her life. I know I did. I have been so blessed to have found the answers - maybe in their simplest form, but answers nevertheless. The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ helps us to understand birth and death and the importance of all that happens in between.

Remember these words from a song at the beginning of the seminary year:

The Plan

One can't help look at an infant's face
Just minutes old and wonder
From where did you come
Was your birth but grace
Or are you part of something larger

What do you know
What could you tell
Something grand and eternal
Birth and death mark mortality
What promises little one would you share with me
What could you help me see

Then at death the questions come
Is this the end
Is there a purpose
Is there more to our existence
Tell me what does it mean
Does the way we choose to live our lives really matter
Speak to me of family and love sublime
Will these things continue in a life hereafter
Are those who leave us lost
beyond the bounds of time

As children of a loving God
What He's become we may be
Our families on earth are extensions of
An all embracing tie through eternity
As God's family

For our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises our life's star
Hath elsewhere had its setting
And cometh from afar
No not in entire forgetfulness
And no not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory
Do we come from God
From God who is our home

As children of a loving God
What He's become we may be
Our families on earth are extensions of
An all embracing tie through eternity
As God's family