Why We Feel What We Feel – March 16, 2003
Perhaps no other event tears at the hearts of parents more than the loss of a child. Life is fragile enough for adults; but seeing the innocent disappear is often more than we can bear. News of abductions carried throughout the media only spread the anxiety to a wider audience. We feel a part of what the parents feel, of what the child may be feeling.
The longer a child goes missing, the more profound the grief of the parents becomes. A wider, television audience may lose touch with the intense feelings they shared with the parents. Life does go on. But as human beings, we share in each other’s lives, even if we don’t always recognize it. We mourn the loss of life. We feel an unexplained emptiness at times—perhaps it is because a missing child has not found her way home yet. Many never do. The apostle Paul taught that we are all connected by a common spiritual heritage. We share a common emotional bond. We are all children of our Father in Heaven. It’s no wonder we feel the pain of someone we have never met.
But it is also no wonder that we feel the joy at a child returned. The unexplained emptiness is replaced by an elation we will never forget. The reunion overcomes us with an emotion deeper than any earthly definition can express. It is a spiritual connection familiar to us all because it is a similitude of the event we all will experience when we return to our Heavenly Father and families.
One day, we will all return to open arms, to multitudes waiting, to tears of joy. No one is forgotten. None will be lost forever. That is our hope in this life. We know there will be a happy ending. And while we are together, we must share in the trials and triumphs of our common journey. As long as hearts are knit together in love, time and space cannot keep us apart. Gordon B. Hinckley has said, “Love is the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it is more than the end of the rainbow. It is at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arches across the sky of a stormy day.” Love is what binds us here, with emotions we can’t always explain. And Love is the light that leads us into eternity.
Program #3839
Ref: 1 Corinthians, 15.