Today is my mother-in-law's birthday. She was born on April 27, 1928. She died in February 1994, while our oldest son was serving a mission in Brazil, from complications related to nephritis, a hereditary kidney disease. She was only 65 years old. The day she passed away came as quite a shock, even though she had had to endure kidney dialysis three days a week for the final 14 years of her life. That is far longer than many dialysis patients ever survive. She was a marvelous woman, dedicated to her family and her faith, not really all that old yet. She had been a marvelous influence in our lives.
All of you, unless you are simply too young to remember, can recollect the loss of loved ones. You probably have vivid memories of what you were doing at the time you first received the news of their death if not of their actual passing. Death touches all our lives. As I have often reminded my own family, life is terminal. Death is the only way out of it. And in turn, sooner or later, it comes to each of us.
The passing of loved ones has been on my mind a lot this week. No, I'm not having premonitions of impending doom. It's just that in the past seven days I've had opportunity to attend three different funeral services: one last Wednesday for the 60-year-old husband of one of the secretaries where I work, and the other two on Friday and Monday for elderly neighbors of ours whom we have known for many, many years.
Death would seem bleak indeed if we did not have an understanding that this life is simply like the second act of a three-act play. We lived before we came here. And we will continue to live after we leave here. Both birth and death are essential to our Heavenly Father's purposes for us. The Book of Mormon even reminds us that "death hath passed upon all men, to fulfill the merciful plan of the great Creator" (2 Nephi 9:6).
The Father's plan of happiness, made operative by the atoning sacrifice and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, for all practical purposes started for each of us at the moment we left our heavenly home, were born into mortality, and stepped into a physical body. An equally important milestone in our eternal journey is the moment we leave this life, step out of that same mortal body, and "are taken home to that God who gave [us] life" (Alma 40:11).
Birth and death define the period of our mortal lives. They do not define who we are or what we've been or what we will become. Death is a comma, not a period.
The Savior's atonement and the power of His resurrection undoes the effects of both the spiritual and physical deaths that we suffer. In simplest terms, the scriptures define spiritual death as our separation from God and physical death as the separation of our spirits from our bodies. Christ takes care of both.
There are two reasons we suffer spiritual death or separation from God. We left His immediate presence when we were born, and we separate ourselves from Him when we sin (which, incidentally, all of us do if we survive beyond the innocence of childhood). His atoning sacrifice covers our sins, if we repent, and brings us back into the presence of God, thus undoing the separation from God, our spiritual death.
And physical death occurs when we die. Our spirits temporarily leave our bodies, and the shell is left here lifeless and placed in a casket and buried in the earth. Christ's resurrection takes care of our physical death because those bodies will live again when in the day of resurrection He restores our immortal spirits to the immortal physical bodies we will then inherit.
Little wonder we can exclaim with the Apostle Paul, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Corinthians 15:55). That is what Easter, which we celebrated just a few weeks ago, is all about. And that is why we have "a lively hope" in Christ (see 1 Peter 1:3).
