Salmon use a magnetic map to guide themselves back to where they were born with incredible precision. The Light of Christ is our magnetic map to guide up back to our heavenly home with similar precision.
I think my theme for Easter could be “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give into you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” That would be a fitting companion to a Christmas theme at “Peace on earth good will toward men.”
In nature, salmon are born in the source of the rivers. At some point in their lives, they need to swim downriver to reach the ocean, where they find the nourishment and conditions necessary for their development.
But the ocean is also a dangerous place where predators lurk and where fishers try to catch the salmon with flashy hooks that imitate food but do not nourish them. If the salmon can survive these threats, they will be ready to use their powerful guidance system to return upriver to the same place where they were born, facing new and some familiar challenges.
This is exactly like the structure of the Plan of Salvation. We were created as spirit children of heavenly parents but we could not grow to be like them while staying in the safe and perfect environment of heaven. We had to voluntarily leave that safety and navigate the dangers of mortality to gain both a physical body and strength of character based on mortal experience.
What happens to a salmon that never leaves it’s birth place? It dies of malnutrition. What happens if salmon make their way to the ocean but never return to their place of birth? They go extinct.
In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life.
The Family: A Proclamation to the World
We can all return one day to the heavenly home from where we came. And like the salmon, we have our own magnetic map, or Light of Christ, to guide us there. Jesus taught His disciples, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
As we focus our lives on Jesus Christ, we will find our way home, enduring to the end and rejoicing to the end. President Russell M. Nelson taught that “the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.”
To successfully navigate mortality back to our heavenly home Jesus Christ must be our true North—the North Star by which we orient our decision making.
Before His birth in mortality, Jesus Christ appeared to Moses and spoke to him on behalf of the Father. He told Moses He had a great work for him to do. During that meeting, the Lord called him “my son” several times.
After that experience, Satan came tempting him, saying, “Moses, son of man, worship me.”
Moses responded to the temptation by remembering his divine nature, saying, “Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God.”
Do you know your divine nature? Do you know it for yourself? Do you remember it in the face of mortal temptations and challenges?
Brothers and sisters, the hooks of mortality are real. They are often enticing, but they seek only one target: to pull us out of the course of living waters that lead to the Father and eternal life.
Just as salmon need to be nourished in the ocean to grow, we also need to nourish ourselves spiritually to avoid dying of spiritual malnutrition. Prayer, the scriptures, the temple, and our regular attendance at Sunday meetings are vital in our spiritual menu.
Our spiritual diet can’t be fully balanced if we neglect even one one of these spiritual menu items:
- Individual Prayer
- Consistent personal scripture study
- Temple worship
- Type and frequency depend on personal circumstances and current spiritual development
- Regular attendance at Sunday meetings
- Fellowship with other saints is important both for our personal spiritual nourishment and for the collective nourishment of the covenant children of God.
Once we make covenants, we will at times find ourselves swimming against the current. Danger, disappointment, temptation, and affliction will test our faith and spiritual strength. Ask for help. Jesus Christ understands and is always eager to share our burdens.
His atoning sacrifice allows our sins to be forgiven to the point that He no longer remembers them.
What does it mean that He no longer remembers our sins? For an omniscient being it can’t mean that He is unable to recall those sins. Instead it means that when He sees the repentant sinner He sees a beloved child rather than a laundry list of things He has forgiven that child for doing, saying, thinking, or believing in the past.
We may not totally forget our sins as part of our mortal learning so we will remember not to repeat them. Instead, we will remember Him as we take the sacrament at church every Sunday. This ordinance is an essential part of worship and spiritual development. Joy comes when we understand that this is not just another day. “The sabbath was made for man” with the intention of giving us rest from the world and renewing our body and spirit.
We also remember Him when we go to the temple—the house of the Lord. Temples give us a deeper knowledge of Jesus Christ as the center of the covenant that leads us to eternal life, “the greatest of … the gifts of God.”
Notice the pattern here. Spiritual nourishment from Sabbath worship doesn’t come from spending an hour or two in the church building on Sundays—it comes from remembering Christ as we take the sacrament and as we talk of Christ and learn of Christ in our Sunday classes. Real, laating spiritual nourishment doesn’t come from doing ordinances for dead people in the temple—it comes from remembering Christ and our covenants as we serve and worship in the house of the Lord.
Similarly, spiritual nourishment through prayer doesn’t come by reciting a wish list or even by recounting a list of things we are thankful for—it comes drawing closer to our Savior as we think of Him and converse with Him about what He wants for us and we are facing in this mortal battle that He has already won in our behalf. Spiritual nourishment through Scripture study doesn’t come from reading the words in the scriptures—it comes as we learn about our Savior and about our divine identity and about the plan of salvation in our mortal experience. When we learn to find Christ in our Scripture study and when we know Him for ourselves as a loving older brother and perfect eternal redeemer in the plan of happiness we won’t slog through scripture study, we will bask in our handbook for successfully navigating mortality and relish the opportunity to learn how it greatest advocate works to bring us safely home.
I know He lives. He knows us and He loves us. He is the way, the truth, and the life of the world. I invite all of us today to center our lives on Jesus Christ and His teachings. Doing so will help us avoid biting the hooks of temptation, offense, and self-pity.
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