Tell Me the Story

Primary children sing, “…Tell me the story that I love to hear.  …Tell me of heaven and why I came here.  Tell how you love me and gently speak and then I’ll go to sleep.”  One of my early memories is sitting on my daddy’s lap in a big overstuffed yellow chair in the front room of our home.  It was bedtime and he was rehearsing the story of the day I was born.  Like the Primary children, it was my favorite story.  He shared how nice I was to come in the afternoon, not the middle of the night.  His mother, on a flight from Salt Lake City to our home in Virginia, landed without knowing she had a new granddaughter.  He and Mom had taken a class so he could be in the delivery room and when I came they counted my fingers and toes and were in awe of the precious gift that had been given to them.  

 
As my father could recall the day I and each of my parents’ children was born, our Heavenly Father remembers the day, the hour, the moment when we left His presence “for the express purpose of providing an opportunity…to have the stretching and refining experience of mortality.” (Elder Patrick Kearon, April 2024) He knows our strengths, He knows our weakness, He knows our past, He knows our future, He cries at our sorrow and rejoices in our every choice to turn towards Him.
 
“Our Father’s beautiful plan…is designed to bring you home, not to keep you out.  No one has built a roadblock and stationed someone there to turn you around and send you away.  In fact, it is the exact opposite.  God is in relentless pursuit of you.  He ‘wants all of His children to choose to return to Him,’ and He employs every possible measure to bring you back.” (Ibid) Turn to Him, know He is there and feel His peace.  He wants gently lead, guide and walk beside us until we are safely home.