Sabbathought: Mortality is school, not vacation.

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement, the most sacred day in the Jewish calendar. I was impressed to note that Avram Grant, Israeli manager of West Ham United, was not present at the match to see his team pick up their first point of the football (soccer) season at Stoke City. He had more important things to do on Yom Kippur.

For a Latter-day Saint the privilege to partake of the sacrament and ponder Jesus Christ's great Atonement can make each Sabbath day a Day of Atonement. The sacrament is the high point of the sacrament meeting and, if we know the gospel, of the holy day itself.

As a boy growing up I often heard my mother tell of a village in England where once a year the villagers would bring along to the parish church a brief anonymous note describing the hardships they were enduring at the time. The notes were collected together and each person took away a different one. Each person always expressed the feeling that they were glad they had their own difficulties, not those of their neighbors.

This came to mind when I saw this week a past reminder from President Gordon B. Hinckley to show kindness to those we meet, no matter how burdened down we feel, for each person is carrying a heavier burden than we are.

There is divine purpose in all of our hardships and sufferings. Mortality is school, not vacation. Joseph Smith translated Hebrews 11:40 as follows: "God having provided some better things for them through their sufferings, for without sufferings they could not be made perfect."

(That is the plan in a nutshell, always remembering the Atonement was performed to cover all of these things. The word Kippur (Atonement) comes from the Hebrew "kaphar," meaning cover, placate, cancel, cleanse, reconcile. Some of the effects of the Fall we inherited from our first parents, like physical death, are covered automatically by the Atonement. The more vital things are covered contingent on our obedience. Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to us.)

In the next chapter of Hebrews Paul urges the Saints to "run with patience the race that is set before us" (12:1). Paul has been to the Olympic track in Athens and understands that runners must stay in the assigned lane for the race. Each of us has a customized course or race or curriculum designed by a loving Father to teach us, through enduring life's experiences, how to become like Him. The lane for each of us is strait and narrow. We must stay in it and at it.

It is worth our time to ponder closely the next few verses and to note how a loving Father stays true to the predesigned curriculum for each of us, with its attendant trials and sufferings. Note that Father's approach is an act of loyalty to, and love for, our best selves: "Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord . . . For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" (verses 5--6).

We can see this principle clearly in Job's sufferings. The lesson should now be clear to us. This is mortality. It is school, not vacation. The Lord's chastening of the house of Israel in Hosea shows the same principle at work.

Orson F. Whitney summarized this doctrine in a beautiful way in 1918:

"When we want counsel and comfort, we do not go to children, nor to those who know nothing but pleasure and self-gratification. We go to men and women of thought and sympathy, men and women who have suffered themselves and can give us the comfort that we need. Is not this God's purpose in causing his children to suffer? He wants them to become more like himself. God has suffered far more than man ever did or ever will, and is therefore the great source of sympathy and consolation.

"There is always a blessing in sorrow and humiliation. They who escape these things are not the fortunate ones. 'Whom God loveth he chasteneth.' . . . Flowers shed most of their perfume when they are crushed. Men and women have to suffer just so much in order to bring out the best that is in them" (IE, Nov. 1918).

May you have a lovely Sabbath day, in the consoling knowledge of these vital things.

God bless.

Steve