Always in Heaven

Years ago, as residents of Farmington, we had the benefit of entering through the back gate of Lagoon free of charge.   We held our annual ward Pioneer Day breakfast there and enjoyed the evening entertainment on summer nights.  Now, however, decades later, I regularly use the walking trail that has been built on the exterior of the fence of Lagoon.  There is no back gate entrance and I would be hard pressed to identify the location of the old back gate or what it looked like exactly.  With the fragility of human memory, it seems as if it has always appeared as it does now.

A home in our neighborhood was bought last year and we have all watched its transformation marveling at the possibilities the new owner sees that we had never seen. The interior was gutted, exterior walls were knocked out to expand doorways, the brick has been painted, a new driveway and basketball court poured.  Landscaping has been ripped out, rocks brought in and we await the finished product.  Though the home has been there for more than thirty years, I am already beginning to forget its previous appearance.  It is a new house created from the old one.

 
Just like our physical surroundings change and the new becomes familiar, the Lord promises that covenants kept and nurtured with the atonement of Jesus Christ will change and heal our hearts, our lives and our families.  “God, in His infinite capacity, seals and heals individuals and families despite tragedy, loss, and hardship….. ‘[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.… The Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven.’  God will strengthen, help, and uphold us; and He will sanctify to us our deepest distress.” (Elder Dale G. Renlund also quoting C.S. Lewis, April 2018).  
 
In the messy, sometimes excruciating renovation phase, we may feel that we will never be whole again, but He who makes “beauty from ashes” is the Builder here.  Like a house made new, we will find that “we have never lived anywhere except in Heaven.”