"Come Fly with Me"

     Couple of weeks ago, a friend and a schoolmate of mine was allured by the seducing whispering of the knife.   This was a friend whom I met this summer and had a chance to get to know pretty well.   With his sudden loss, there was definitely a void somewhere in my soul-- no matter how significant anyone is to you, the little acquantanceship that you make with another will leave a fine impression and a remembrance in your heart that can be visibly and noticeably empty as the person passes across the veil; I want to very well say that that's human nature (I'll explain that in a bit).  

     As the community around him was taken pretty hard, even if they didn't know who he was, I thought about the afterlife a whole bunch. In the mission field, it's a hard thing coping with grief and doing the work of The Lord at the same time-- you're supposed to preach a gospel-- a good news-- yet the people see you noticeably distressed.   Personally, I am absolutely terrible when it comes to hiding emotions, so people notice right away. I wondered, though, there's this thing called "The Plan of Salvation" that we teach-- it says that once we pass on, there's a realm before resurrection where we're either in a paradise" or a "prison."  Not only that, the people in prison have an opportunity to hear the truth so that they may be lifted into paradise-- Jesus was one of those people proclaiming the truth to the prisoners (see 1 Peter 3:18-19).   So in essence, if you're willing to hear, you're saved.   If you're willing to follow Christ and accept His gospel, you'll be living with him when the day comes when you see God again.

      Except one thing-- even if we know the assurances of others and their salvation in the post-mortal realm, does that mean that we shouldn't be mourning but rejoicing that, as cliche as it sounds, "he is in a better place?"  This is the interesting little part: although we know full well the destinations of others, the fact that they are not here and we have to wait quite a while to see our significant ones again leaves us with loneliness in this life.  The fact that they are no longer here but there yearns us to want to see that person again, which we cannot.  To be grieving is to express your feeling that you miss someone a lot.  You're almost never sad that he or she died, but you're sad that you won't see that person again for a very long time.

     Take our church leaders for example-- from Howard W. Hunter to Thomas S. Monson-- as amazing and selfless as they are, they mourn and the weep at the passing of their friends and family. With the knowledge and wisdom that they know, you'd think they would spare the time to mourn! No-- these men of God are human too; they weep because they miss their loved ones. Human nature is built upon the foundation of God's nature. As we weep and mourn for those whom we miss, God does so with us as well. God weeps and mourns if we die spiritually. If we just live an unpleasant life, doing all sorts of bad things, God knows what, we die in the inside.   Once we do, God misses us. Until we can repent and become worthy to be with Him again, He's sad; he's crying for us.

     Let me just bear you my witness that this is the nature of God. With the trials that we all go through, life is not easy-- it was never meant to be easy. Even with assurances and relief that we will return to a better place than here, it's not easy accepting that fact for others.   Only time and God can heal the emptiness wrought upon by grief.   Arduous the process is, it can teach us a lot about ourselves.