A SACRED GIFT

 

 

Have you ever heard someone say: “It’s my life and my body and I’ll do with it as I please”??? Never a bigger falsehood has been said than this. In his efforts to impress upon his people their indebtedness to God for all that they owned and were, King Benjamin expressed it this way:  “Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you” (Mosiah 2:25). The truth is, this mortal life is a gift of grace and our mortal bodies are not our own but are on loan from God (Elder David A. Bednar, Ye Are the Temple of God, Ensign Sept 2001, p 18).

The sad thing is that most of us very seldom view our bodies as sacred or special. We are either in a tug-o-war with it, abuse it, let us serve us or seduce us. Here is the stark truth: “In my practice as a psychologist, I have seen talented, righteous Latter-day Saint women who despise themselves because their bodies do not look like what they see in movies or magazines. Many say they are no good unless they look good. Other clients have been so seduced by pornography that they view the body as a thing to be consumed and exploited. Often, they eventually feel duped, trapped, and degraded themselves, since along with a loss of respect for the body and for others comes an inevitable loss of respect for oneself” (Diane, L. Spangler, The Body, A Sacred Gift, Ensign July 2005, p 14-18)

Diane Spangler goes on to say that ‘one foundational gospel truth about the body is the principle that having a physical body is a godlike attribute, that we are more like God with a body than without’ and the ‘second truth the scriptures offer about the body is the clarification of its nature as a sacred gift from God’ with ‘the purpose of the body to help us learn, progress, serve, and glorify the Giver of the gift who is God’. It can be an overwhelming thought considering we are so utterly subject to the ‘natural man’ which King Benjamin called ‘an enemy to God’ (Mosiah 3:19). Consider what Elder Bednar says about the natural man: “We live in a fallen world. The very elements out of which our bodies were created are by nature fallen and ever subject to the pull of sin, corruption, and death. Thus, the Fall of Adam and its consequences affect us most directly through our physical bodies”.

But here is a twofold hope: 1. “And yet, we are dual creatures, for at the same time that we inhabit a physical body that is subject to the Fall, we also have a spirit that represents the eternal part of us” (Elder Bednar, p 17 of abovementioned article) and; 2. President Brigham Young said that even though the body is of the earth and is subject to the power of the devil, “the spirit is pure, and under the special control and influence of the Lord” (Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widstoe [1941], 70). This should give us hope that we can rise to the responsibility of being responsible…..

We are not only indebted to God for His grace of creation but because we are a purchased people: “For ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:20).  Our agency was exercised when we upheld and supported the Plan of Salvation in pre-existence and when the Saviour hung on the cross for it. This is the price that was paid for the sacred gift that is our body. It’s a body we will possess forever. If we are not viewing it this way now, maybe we need to begin for we are valued by the highest price that was ever paid…

A life laid bare in selfless giving

For man’s purpose of salvation

Crimson drops were spilt like roses

On the hill of His creation. 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: The Rose of Sharon by Yongsung Kim)