Week 11 - Intimacy and Blessings from the Lord

         At the end of the 70’s, when I was about 7 or 8 years old, me and my same-age friends looked for every free-time opportunities to play together and enjoy all the freedom and happiness that resulted from it. I remember that at some point I was chosen to be the group “doctor”, and my function was to imitate all the functions that a real doctor has, or at least the way we imagined it was! We arrange a kind of doctor´s office where I received, with a fake stethoscope, my friends. During those child plays, one of my “girl-patient” undressed, probability the same way she used to do it in a real doctor´s office, and asked me to examine her.
         The episode was so pure, without any kind of malice or bad intention that my memories are peaceful and instructional. The way I see this child-episode is probably the way Adam and Eve saw each other naked in Eden's Garden. It is not them a surprise that children, that are pure in heart, have no problem of playing naked with each other and enjoy doing it!
         The command given to Adan and Eve to “multiply and replenish the earth” (Genesis 1: 28) was not completely understood in the beginning, like little children, they were still too pure to understand the powers of physical intimacy and procreation. Only latter, as consequence of the Fall, their understating increased; “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked …” (Genesis 3:7)
         For us, as Latter-day Saints, physical intimacy is not a result of an evolutionary process  to maintain the human species alive. Physical intimacy is one of the main core of our existence. From its sacred powers, men and women, legally married, have the privilege of creating tabernacles for the spirit sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, gain their own offspring, and fortified their marriages by intimately and respectfully join together their “flesh” to be as one (Genesis 2: 24). This heavenly commandment transforms sexual intimacy in one of the most beautiful and sacred human responsibilities.

         “Sex is for procreation and expression of love. It is the destiny of men and women to join together to make eternal family units. In the context of lawful marriage, the intimacy of sexual relations is right and divinely approved. There is nothing unholy or degrading about sexuality in itself, for by that means men and women join in a process of creation and in an expression of love.” (President Spencer W. Kimball, The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [1982], 311)  


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