Be Your Best Self

It is so hard to condense these chapters with just SOME of the messages. This whole book is wonderful!

A HOPELESS DAWN - JOYFUL MORNING

     President Monson talks about visiting an art gallery in London. He saw a piece that not only caught his attention, but also captured his heart. The artist, Frank Bramley, had painted a humble cottage facing a wind-swept sea. Kneeling at the side of an older woman was a grief-filled wife who mourned the loss of her seafaring husband. The spent candle at the window ledge told of her fruitless, night-long vigil. The huge gray clouds were all that remained of the tempest-torn night.
     He sensed her loneliness, felt her despair. The hauntingly vivid inscription that the artist gave to his work told the tragic story. It read: A HOPELESS DAWN.
     For her and countless others who have loved and lost dear ones, each dawn is hopeless. Such is the experience of those who regard the grave as the end and immortality as but a dream.
     The famed scientist Madame Marie Curie returned to her home the night of the funeral for her husband, Pierre Curie, who was killed in an accident in the streets of Paris, and made this entry in her diary: "They filled the grave and put sheaves of flowers on it. Everything is over. Pierre is sleeping his last sleep beneath the earth. It is the end of everything, everything, everything."
     The atheist Bertrand Russell adds his testament: "No fire, no heroism, no integrity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave." And Schopenjauer, the German philosopher and pessimist, was even more bitter. He wrote: "To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake."
     In reality, every thoughtful person has asked himself this question: Does the life of man continue beyond the grave? Death comes to all mankind. The aged, the middle age, the young. No one can escape the tragic fact.
     We can all be inspired by the apostle Paul's words as he declared: "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Roman 8:38-39.)
     Perhaps no statement in scripture more dramatically reveals a divine truth than Paul's epistle to the Corinthians: "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (1 Corinthians 15:22.)
     He talks about a couple of stories in the bible about widows losing sons and about a couple of widows in our day who have lost sons and husbands and how they were comforted by apostles.
     But what about us? Is there comfort for the grieving heart? Does God just remember the widows in the bible. Or those that live close to a prophet of God?
     The darkness of death can ever be dispelled by the light of revealed truth. "I am the resurrection, and the life," spoke the Master; "he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." (John 11:25-26).
     This reassurance, even holy confirmation of life beyond the grave, could well be the peace promised by the Savior when He assured his disciples: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubles, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:27)
     "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." He will not abandon His children who trust in Him.
     The Prophet Joseph Smith, as he and Sidney Rigdon testified: "And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That He lives! This is the knowledge that sustains. This is the truth that comforts. This is the assurance that guides those bowed down with grief out of the shadows and into the light. This help is available to all of us.
     "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psalm 30:5)
     He concludes with his testimony: "With all the strength of my soul, I testify that God lives, that His Beloved Son is the first fruits of the resurrection, that the gospel of Jesus Christ is that penetrating light that makes of every hopeless dawn a joyful morning.

I have lost aunts and uncles and grandparents but the one that hurt the most was when I lost my dad just over two years ago. I never knew such grief was possible. I now know some of the grief that others go through when they lose a loved one. I also know that we can and will be comforted and that there is Eternal Life. We WILL be reunited with our loved ones. We need to do our part to Be Our Best Self and help those around us.