Week 4 - “I had loved before, but I knew not why."

Being born and raised in a family that taught me the importance of family made me prepared for feelings of gratitude and desire toward marriage and family life. For instance, I remember that even before I was baptized, in my early 20’s, and not knowing clearly about the “doctrinal ideal of marriage”, extremely well presented by Elder Bednar’s article, I had this inexplicable desire of getting married, and more interestingly I had this certainty that love and ties created in and by a family would not end with death. I knew, without knowing exactly the doctrine (that was presented lately in my life by the missionaries), that the bounds of love created inside a family had more power than death, and would be eternal. It was not a surprise that, with 24, when I had the privilege of learning about the plan of salvation, and how our Father in Heaven had created a plan that could elevate families to an eternal perspective, my joy was full, it was like a dream come true, it was like I had always known it, but I could not explain it.
As so well explained by Elder Bednar’s article “Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan”, marriage is much more than the “fundamental unit of society, as the foundation of a strong nation, and as a vital sociological and cultural institution” (4), marriage is in reality the reason why we are here on earth, it is central to God’s plan, and diminish, alter or adulterate is sacredness and real purpose is to change God’s plan, and jeopardize our divine potential.
The world seeks only to join people by contractual marriage but the Lord desires to join men and women by a three-part covenant marriage (Covenant Marriage by Elder Bruce Hafen) with the Lord as the main cornerstone.
“I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feeling, which would lift my soul from the transitory things of this grovelling sphere and expand it as the ocean. … In short, I could now love with the spirit and with the understanding also." (Quote from Elder Pratt in Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan by Elder Bednar)
References
Elder David A. Bednar, “Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan”, Ensign June 2006

Bruce C. Hafen, “Covenant Marriage” Ensign, Nov 1996, 26

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