TIME SLIPPING BY

I can't recall exactly, but I suspect my father wasn't much more than a decade older than my current age when he said to me, ‘You know you live all your life and then the time comes when you would just as soon do something else.” As we witnessed my mother in her last two years of mortality it was very evident she was very anxious to be doing something else.

I suspect that as time slips rapidly by I am coming to understand more clearly why he was able to be so casual about that eminent time in all our lives when the mortal slips into the immortal state. There are however, still days when I think I have just begun to be able to grasp a glimmer of what he was expressing as the light was slipping from his eyes. I know that now that much more of my mortal existence lies in the past than in the future, three things seem to be happening all at the same time.

The joys and sorrows of the past daily become more of a vague reality.

The moments of today slip by more rapidly and quickly join the forgotten moments of yesterday.

That which is yet to come becomes more important as each day takes its place in the pages of my personal history.

This phenomenon seems to have been going on for as long as Heavenly Father’s children have been passing their probationary state on this orb and probably on orbs now made eternal which preceded our sphere’s organization.

The Book of Mormon prophets in one way or another spoke to their progeny about these ‘last days of mortality’ just as my father had confided in me. I recently reviewed a few of their parting words and at this time of my life find them refreshing and encouraging.

Jacob to his family – The time passed away as it were unto us a dream… (Jacob 7:26)
As father Alma, the High Priest of the Nephites’ life, was slipping away he spoke to his people – We looked forward with an eye of faith and a view of this body raised in immortality… Prepare quickly for the hour is at hand… (Alma 5:15, 5:29)

None of us should be surprised when we are fortunate to enjoy the blessings of living in a time when the age of our mortal span is extended by the miracles of our times, to find that as time slips silently by, that that part of our lives which lies in the past becomes but a dream as life’s moments fade quickly and our greater reality lies in what enlightened vision shows lies ahead.

Our reality becomes more and more filled with the certainty of life after life and we see more clearly the actuality of immortality. A teaching of a personal resurrection, which was long ago planted as a tender seed of hope, has now been nourished by the development of faith and has sprung into a tree upon which the fruit of the certainty of eternal life is ripening.

I am grateful that I have lived sufficiently beyond my three score and ten and have arrived at the point, in my mortal progression just as did my father and Jacob and Alma, when the grave becomes less a dreaded concern and the reality of the angel’s words to the women at the empty tomb begin to press upon the senses as ultimate truth. Why seek ye the living among the dead. He is not here, but is risen… (Luke 24:6) Without laboring the many testimonies which have been given, we will add just one more from the latter days. This is the testimony last of all, that he lives! For we saw Him… (Doctrine and Covenants 76:22, 23)

Likewise, I am grateful I have come to realize that one cannot have a testimony of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ settle upon them without sooner or later coming to recognize that because he broke the bands of death, all shall be made alive in Him and the day will come when this mortal will surely put on immortality.

It is a great blessing and should fill each soul which comes to know with comfort, that this mortal span was always meant to be temporary and transitory. One of the great assurances which we all may receive through the teachings of the Savior, is that just as embryo grows into babe, child passes into puberty and the proverbial strings of a mother’s apron begin to loosen, we must also in the process of the passages of life, become less attached to this world and gain the liberating understanding which allows us to willingly put off mortality and look forward to the endless state of immortality.

May we always keep in the forefront of our thoughts that it is by and through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus the Christ that eternal existence is made a reality.