Everyone Will Lose Someone They Love

Trust in the Savior’s Deliverance

By President Henry B. Eyring

Second Counselor in the First Presidency

From a devotional address, “The Power of Deliverance,” delivered at Brigham Young University on January 15, 2008.

Life ends early for some and eventually for us all. Each of us will be tested by facing the death of someone we love.

The other day I met a man I had not seen since his wife died. It was a chance meeting in a pleasant social holiday situation. He was smiling as he approached me. Remembering his wife’s death, I phrased the common greeting very carefully: “How are you doing?”

The smile vanished, his eyes became moist, and he said quietly, with great earnestness, “I’m doing fine. But it’s very hard.”

It is very hard, as most of you have learned and all of us will sometime know. The hardest part of that test is to know what to do with the sorrow, the loneliness, and the loss that we can feel as if a part of us has been lost. Grief can persist like a chronic ache. And for some, there may be feelings of anger or injustice....

Good people around you will try to understand your grief at the passing of a loved one. They may feel grief themselves. The Savior not only understands and feels grief but also feels your personal grief that only you feel. And He knows you perfectly. He knows your heart....

There are many ways the Savior can succor those who grieve, each fitted to them. But you can be sure that He can and will do it in the way that is best for those who grieve and for those around them....

The Lord can inspire us to reach out for the power of deliverance from our grief in the way best suited to us. We can choose to serve others for the Lord. We can testify of the Savior, of His gospel, of the restoration of His Church, and of His Resurrection. We can keep His commandments.

All of those choices invite the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost who can comfort us in the way suited to our need....

humility. So the way to deliverance always requires humility in order for the Lord to be able to lead us by the hand where He wants to take us through our troubles and on to sanctification.

Read D&C Section 138

The Vision of the Redemption of the Dead

By President M. Russell Ballard

Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

On this special 100th anniversary, I invite you to thoroughly and thoughtfully read this revelation. As you do so, may the Lord bless you to more fully understand and appreciate God’s love and His plan of salvation and happiness for His children.

A mission to visit relatives and friends

Our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful, and worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges, may have a mission given them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, bringing from the Divine Presence messages of love, of warning, of reproof and instruction, to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh.

Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. (1939), 436.

How Do We Coupe With Grief?

Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin (1917-2008) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles addressed this question in his October 2006 general conference address:

“I think that of all the days since the beginning of this world’s history, that Friday [when the Savior was crucified] was the darkest.

“But the doom of that day did not endure.

“The despair did not linger because on Sunday, the resurrected Lord burst the bonds of death. He ascended from the grave and appeared gloriously triumphant as the Savior of all mankind.

“And in an instant the eyes that had been filled with ever-flowing tears dried. The lips that had whispered prayers of distress and grief now filed the air with wondrous praise, for Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, stood before them as the firstfruits of the Resurrection, the proof that death is merely the beginning of a new and wondrous existence. . . .

“Because of the life and eternal sacrifice of the Savior of the world, we will be reunited with those we have cherished.”

“Sunday Will Come,” Ensign, Nov. 2006, 30.