Souviens-Toi

Last night my wife and I attended a performance of the New World Symphony by Antonin Dvorak, one of my very favorites.  This is in part due to the beautiful melody of the slow second movement, a melody that became very dear to me when I served a mission in France.  This is because that melody was used in the French-only hymn Souviens-Toi that is a beloved hymn among the French-speaking Saints.  Not only is the music itself powerful and very memorable, but the words themselves touch on the plan of salvation in ways we typically don’t speak of.  The words are those of a parent to a child, telling that child of the premortal existence they had experienced together before coming to earth.  I’ve sung the words to all of my children, wondering just what the premortal experience was like.  My favorite verse is the last one:

Souviens-toi, mon enfant: A l’aube des temps,

Nous étions des amis jouant dans le vent.

Puis un jour, dans la joie nous avons choisi

D’accepter du Seigneur le grand plan de vie.

Ce soir là, mon enfant, nous avons promis

Par l’amour, par la foi, d’être réunis.

My own rough translation of this is as follows:

Remember, my child: At the dawn of time,

We were friends playing in the wind.

Then one day, with joy we chose

To accept the Lord’s great plan of life.

That night, my child, we promised

Through love, through faith, to be reunited.

I of course don’t know exactly what happened in the premortal world and what our relationships there were like with those who would become our family members.  It certainly rings true to me that there would have been at least some kind of association there with the ones who we would be put with here in mortality by God.  What we do know, though, is that we did choose to come to earth and accept the Savior, indeed we “shouted for joy” at the prospect of participating in God’s plan (Job 38:7).  Whether we knew well there those whom we know well here on earth is not clear, but it is certain that we knew our Father in Heaven and used our agency to elect to venture down to this world to experience both the trials and the joy of this mortal experience. 

I hope that I can indeed help my children remember the great plan of salvation and in particular the infinite love that our Father in Heaven has for each of us, for He is the one who prepared us to come here to earth.  I hope to instill in them this same burning witness that Moses had and which helped to protect him from the adversary: “For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten” (Moses 1:13).  Each of us is indeed a son or daughter of God, and as such we have been created in a likeness of the Firstborn, even the Savior of all mankind.  We come from divine heritage, and as such we have the ability to become even as He is. We all need this witness in our lives, that we are indeed of divine parentage and as such have great things to accomplish here on earth.