Glorious Morning

I was up before dawn this morning and, having enjoyed my devotions, went for a walk.  The sunrise this morning was spectacular!  So breath taking in fact, that I wanted to run from door to door in the neighborhood waking everybody up so they wouldn't miss it.  It was one of those heavenly scenes that make you wonder if this is the day.  Is this the moment of Christ's glorious return?  Will He appear in such a magnificent sunrise?

I knew my daughter and grandkids were up in time and headed out to participate in a Kid's Triathlon in Roosevelt.  They would be traveling west at that moment and I prayed that they might turn around a behold the brilliant grandeur of the morning sky.  How thankful I was that we weren't snuggled under the covers, but rather, out here beholding the handiwork of God.

I have a funeral to attend today and later a fireside to address.  I spent my walk contemplating what the Lord would have be express to the bereaved and what He might have me offer as counsel to the Youth of Maeser 1st Ward.  My mind turned to the end of the world.  Will I be here to see it?  Or, will I like Aunt Vera have my own mortal end come before then.  Over the course of my life I've had a number of people ask if it was the end of the world.  After every earth quake or typhoon we experienced in the Philippines, people would approach and ask if we thought it was the end of the world.  After 9/11, the same thing.  After Presidents Clinton and Bush and Obama were elected, the same thing.  Is this the end of the world?  Some times I've been tempted to say, "I hope so."

What some of us fear others of us eagerly anticipate.  I suspect the world has some significant time left, but do we?  Aunt Vera's end of the world came just the other day.  Mine might be tomorrow.  Yours might be thirty years from now.  If we are prepared for it, it may come at any time.

Then it occurred to me that the Second Coming can come any time as well.  We don't have to wait for the end of the world.  We don't even have to wait for death.  The Second Coming happened for Joseph Smith  190 years ago.  For multitudes of others, much more recently than that.  I think of Elder Bruce R. McConkie's wonderful testimony:

"I am one of his witnesses, and in a coming day I shall feel the nail marks in his hands and in his feet and shall wet his feet with my tears.

But I shall not know any better then than I know now that he is God’s Almighty Son, that he is our Savior and Redeemer, and that salvation comes in and through his atoning blood and in no other way."

I can remember watching another sunrise with some anxiety about the pending arrival of the Lord.  Today was different.  Today He was already leading me, guiding me and walking beside me.  And I realized, with joy, that I no longer need to dread that blessed day.