An Infinite Love

This post was originally a talk given by Jenenne Chipman for the Auburn 3rd Ward worship services while visiting California for the holidays. She is a student at Brigham Young University.

As I have been thinking about this post it has made me personally reflect a lot about who the Savior is to me and really what my membership in the church looks like. Am I doing it because I know people will message me if I don't come or I am truly doing it for me? These last two years with going to college, no one makes me wake up on Sunday to go to church, and there isn't seminary to make me do my scripture study in the morning. It is all up to me and I find that I still regularly attend and my relationship with my Heavenly Parents has changed and my bond and dependence on my Savior has grown exponentially. 

This year in November I had the privilege of receiving my endowments in the Provo City Center Temple and the entire time I was going through for the first time I just was trying to take everything in. Leaving that day, I could regurgitate everything that I had heard and experienced but I learned, as time has passed, that the most memorable thing about my temple experience, and that has continued as I have gone back for endowment and sealing sessions, is the surmountable love that our Heavenly Family has for us.

Love’s Role in God’s Plan for Us

At Brigham Young University we are required to take a religion course every semester and I have completed three so far: Teachings and Doctrines of The Book of Mormon, Eternal Families, and Christ and the Everlasting Gospel. I was really nervous that when I was in these classes it would make religion just a thing I had to study for like my bio-organic chemistry class rather than for a spiritual uplift, but I was very wrong. I would like to reference back to lessons I have learned from these courses, especially my Christ and the Everlasting Gospel course.

To start, we should go to the beginning of this plan God has for us. In the pre-mortal life we were all together in the presence of our Savior and Heavenly Parents. When Heavenly Father presented his perfect plan, the Plan of Salvation, the Savior was in full support and obedience to this plan seeing the pure joy that would subsequently come from this plan. Out of love for his Father and all of us, he offered himself to ensure that we would be able to return to live with our eternal families once again.

He gave you and me an unlimited capacity to love. That includes the capacity to love the unlovable and those who not only do not love you but presently “despitefully use you, and persecute you" (Matthew 5:43-44). Our Savior was the perfect example of this as he always spoke kindly of others and when he was on the cross he proclaimed “forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). 

I would also like to talk about this love as a heavenly inherited gift to those who are on this earth. I have a group of 25 friends at BYU who are all of varying Arab descent. In this friend group I am the only member of my faith, and one is of Roman Catholic faith; the rest of my friends are of Muslim faith. These friends that I have made have been one of the best examples to me on how to be Christlike. They have shown me that all the people on this earth, due to our origins, have inherited traits from our Heavenly Parents and this outstanding love that Christ showed each and everyone of us in the premortal life, his ministry on the earth and his endless support now is not diminished in those of other faiths. 

This love that we learn about is ultimately the source of all the good in this world, and the purpose of all that we do in this gospel. We do temple work for the dead because of this love and the happiness we want all to inherited in eternal life. 

An Infinite Love

We learn in the Book of Mormons about this love through “men are that they might have joy" and this joy that it is talking about is an infinite love that can only truly come from the blessings of the spirit and the gospel. This love is also what subsequently allowed our Savior to come down and suffer for our sins that we may be able to return to live with our heavenly parents again and become exalted. 

Something that I learned in my religion class was a question that was presented. Someone asked,

“I know that Christ suffered on the cross for our sins, that when I repent it can all be forgiven as if it never happened in heavenly fathers' eyes, but I can never forget and I still feel inadequate, so why should I be able to enter into the presence of this perfect being?"

This question that probably every one of us will ask at some point of our lives. The professor took a second and stepped away from his lesson plans and began just talking to us as he knows that this topic was not a question of just one student. The spirit quickly set into the room strongly and he recited this quote from Joseph Smith:

“Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive."

He continued to explain to us that these feelings of inadequacy are not from our Heavenly Father trying to ‘scare us into’ being faithful. He also read an excerpt from Brad Wilcox's talk “His Grace is Sufficient" and if you haven't heard or read it I would recommend going back and reading the whole thing. I would like to share the same excerpt he presented us with. He said, "The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can go home but that—miraculously we can feel at home there...." He also went on to quote Elder Neal A. Maxwell, who once said the following: 

“May I speak … to those buffeted by false insecurity, who, though laboring devotedly in the Kingdom, have recurring feelings of falling forever short. … this feeling of inadequacy … is normal. There is no way the Church can honestly describe where we must yet go and what we must yet do without creating a sense of immense distance. … This is a gospel of grand expectations, but God's grace is sufficient for each of us” (Maxwell, Neal A., “Notwithstanding My Weakness,” 1976).

This grace is sourced from his love and I can promise that it will be enough.

Build Up A Fine Ladder

I would like to close by summarizing a poem I was sent by Aubrey Clement when she was on her mission and we had been emailing back and forth about some issues going on. 

Photo by Cesar Cid (cropped)

The poem speaks about a someone who has been stuck in a deep hole for a long time and had tried over and over to get out.

Then from off in the distance I heard someone call:
"Get up! Get ready! There's nothing the matter!
Take rocks and take sticks and build up a fine ladder!"

This was a thought that had not crossed my mind,
But I started to stack all the stones I could find. 
When I ran out of stones, then old sticks were my goal,
For some way or another I'd climb from that hole.
I soon had a ladder that stood very tall,
And I thought, "I'll soon leave this place once and for all!"

I climbed up the ladder, but had to stop,
For my ladder stopped short, some ten feet from the top. 
I went back down my ladder and felt all around,
But there were no more boulders nor sticks to be found.
I sat down in the darkness and started to cry.
I'd done all I could do and I gave my best try.

But in spite of my work, in this hole I must die.
And all I could do was to sit and think, "Why?"
Was my ladder to short? Was my hole much too deep?
Then from way up on high came a voice: "Do not weep."
And then faith, hope, and love entered into my chest
As the voice calmly told me that I'd done my best. 

He said, “You have worked hard, and your labor's been rough,
But the ladder you've built is at last tall enough.
So do not despair, there is reason to hope,
Just climb up your ladder; I'll throw down my rope."
I climbed up my ladder, then climbed up the cord.
When I got to the top of it, there stood the Lord. 

So do not lose faith; there is reason to hope;
Just climb up your ladder; he'll throw down his rope. 

Because of the love that we have been gifted from our Heavenly Parents and the example we have been shown by our loving older brother—our Savior, caretaker, and friend—we will return home. 

Finally, there is a quote that I heard in seminary from Sister Bergeson and I would like to share it with you: “Come back... come in... come up...come home... for he awaits your triumphant return.”