Sealings

Recently my six-year-old son announced to me that he was going to leave the family and find another home.  This was in response to the fact that we wouldn’t let him watch another movie that day.  I knew it was simply a statement he was making because he was mad and would soon forget that he ever said it, but of course as a parent it still makes you sad to hear that kind of remark.  How devastating it would be to indeed lose him.  His threat to leave the family came to my mind as I was in the temple with my wife today participating in the sealing ordinances.  I thought about him and my other children and imagined what it would be like to be there at the altar with them having them sealed to us.  I know that the fact that being born in the covenant seals them to us, but sometimes I wish they could have that experience to participate in the sealing ordinance with us.  As I thought about my son’s angry threat to leave I was even more grateful that he is indeed mine forever as long as I keep the covenants I have made with the Lord.

               The section in the Doctrine and Covenants that teachings us about sealings is D&C 132.  In it we read, “And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy Spirit of promise… and if ye abide in my covenant, and commit no murder whereby to shed innocent blood, it shall be done unto them in all things whatsoever my servant hath put upon them, in time, and through all eternity; and shall be of full force when they are out of the world; and they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation and glory in all things, as hath been sealed upon their heads, which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever” (v19).  This suggests that for a sealing to be efficacious we must abide in the covenant and it must be sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise.  This means that we must keep the commandments of the Lord that we have promised to, but also that for a sealing to be complete it must be sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.  This comes I believe well after the temple ceremony when we have showed the Lord that we are truly committed to the sealing.  I really like S. Michael Wilcox’s analogy of the jar—we get an empty jar when we make covenants in the temple with our spouse.  You never seal an empty jar, so we spend our lives “filling” the jar with the way that we love and serve each other throughout our lives.  Then once it is full of life’s experiences passed through together in righteousness does the Lord then seal the jar.  Or, in other words, the Holy Spirit of promise will seal our families together after we have the jars full of a lifetime of love and service and caring for each other.  As I thought about that principle for spouses I realized that we might think of it the same way with our children.  We need to “fill the jar” for each of them by giving of our time and love and concern so that there is indeed something to seal between us.  We perhaps don’t know what it takes for our families to truly be sealed by the Lord, but surely we should do all we can to cherish and nurture those relationships that we hope to be in “full force when [we] are out of the world.”