This morning I happened across a post about Karen R. Merkley’s temple experiences that I thought were powerful. Here is what she shared with me:
One night in the temple, I pondered the changes occurring in some of my loved ones lives. Then another thought attached itself to the previous one like a precious string of pearls forming a necklace. The gems were these impressions: Just as your ancestors prepared the way for you to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ by prompting you along the way, you prepared the way for them to receive it fully through family history and temple ordinances. They, in turn, have come back in great beauty and force to teach, instruct, guide our extended families.
And then came the additional thought: In much the same way, but on a much more significant scale, the Savior prepared the way for us to receive the gospel, and we now have the opportunity to prepare the way for Him through missionary, family history, and temple work–sealing together the human family in preparation for His Second Coming. This pattern is stunning to me.
And these impressions have changed my life.
I have since come to see that family history is synonymous with family healing. The waters of the temple are the waters of life. Those who are faithful are called to work with the Savior in being “repairers of the breach”–or the gaps in the human family caused by sin and error (Isaiah 58:11-12). I testify that we can do this–we can help heal the human family through this glorious work made possible through Christ’s work of proxy for us–his atoning sacrifice. His endowment prepares us for ours and our provision of endowments for others will prepare us to receive the Second Endowment–to see the face of the Lord. It’s better than lobster tail. It’s the fruit off the tree of life itself – white, delicious, sweeter than any other – of that, I bear witness.
In another post, Karen wrote:
Some wonder about the symbolic nature of the temple ceremony. Those outside the Church often mystify what isn’t mysterious, and sensationalize what isn’t sensational in the worldly way. We learn symbolically. Just as baptism is symbolic of our death to our old selves and a rebirth to a new life in Christ, and as well, of Christ’s resurrection, so, too, is the endowment symbolic of our commitments and our progression as we learn how to enter the Lord’s presence in an instructional venue.
I like what Mormon educator, Truman Madsen, says about the nature of ordinances. Truman acknowledges the blend of thought and feeling that occur in the temple, and says he wishes we had a word for it, like “compre-feel.” In the ordinances, “a symphonic combination of all aspects of the self occurs” (The Highest in Us, p. 39). Ordinances trigger spiritual memories and enable us, endow us with power to carry on here tapping into a reservoir of strength and knowledge that has come with us here and which the Savior has provided through his atoning sacrifice for our sins. This is not a matter of magical mysticism but of the Master’s manner of teaching us in His house.
I love the temple. I recently found one expression of my feelings about the temple ordinances in the scriptures: “More to be desired are they than gold, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb” (Psalms 19:10).
This is only a glimpse into what a temple is. There is much more to come. And there is much that can only be experienced first-hand.
Sources:
Truman G. Madsen is a philosopher, essayist, teacher and biographer. He is emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Brigham Young University, and was Director of the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies in Jerusalem. He held the Richard L. Evans Chair in Religious Studies at B.Y.U. He has been guest professor at Northeastern University, Haifa, and Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He sponsored several symposia on comparative religion published as Reflections on Mormonism, The Temple in Antiquity, and Chosenness and Covenant in Judaism and Mormonism. Among his volumes on Mormon thought are: Eternal Man, Christ and the Inner Life, Four Essays on Love, The Highest in Us, The Radiant Life. Five Classics, Joseph Smith, the Prophet, Defender of the Faith, a biography of B. H. Roberts and On Human Nature. He is one of the editors and a contributor to the five-volume Macmillan Encyclopedia of Mormonism. He is married to Ann Nicholls Madsen. The couple has three children and a Navajo foster son.1
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