Family Night Field Trips: Final Part

Our final plan of salvation outing was a trip to the cemetery.

What is this thing called death

This quiet passing in the night?

Tis not the end but genesis

of better worlds and greater light.

O God, touch Thou my aching heart

And calm my troubled, haunting fears.

Let hope and faith, transcendent, pure,

Give strength and peace beyond my tears.

There is no death, but only change,

With recompense for vict’ry won.

The gift of Him who loved all men,

The Son of God, the Holy One.

Gordon B. Hinckley

(Always loved President Hinckley's poem!!)

We talked about what happens when people die.  We talked about the spirit world.  We discussed the reality of the Savior's resurrection and the reassuring truth that we can be together with people we love even after the separation of death.  It was a meaningful, memorable conclusion to our little series of field-trips - maybe my favorite of them all. The cemetery proved the perfect spot to testify that Christ will truly come to earth again and that resurrection will really happen.

O death where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

The Greatest Reality

"I think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross. ...

On that Friday the Savior of mankind was humiliated and bruised, abused and reviled.

It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God.

I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday was the darkest.

But the doom of that day did not endure.

The despair did not linger because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord burst the bonds of death. He ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind.

And in an instant the eyes that had been filled with ever-flowing tears dried. The lips that had whispered prayers of distress and grief now filled the air with wondrous praise, for Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, stood before them as the firstfruits of the Resurrection, the proof that death is merely the beginning of a new and wondrous existence.

Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.

But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come.

No matter our desperation, no matter our grief, Sunday will come. In this life or the next, Sunday will come.

I testify to you that the Resurrection is not a fable."

Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, "Sunday will Come," October 2006

Happy Easter!