There's No Place Like Home

To my daughter, 

               This year you were Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and one of the famous things that she said was this phrase: “There’s no place like home.” That is certainly true for us here in mortality, and I hope that you love to return to your home after you are away. I believe the phrase also has great meaning for us in our eternal journey: there is no place like our heavenly home where our Father in Heaven lives. One of your primary songs says this: 

I lived in heaven a long time ago, it is true;

Lived there and loved there with people I know. So did you.

Then Heav’nly Father presented a beautiful plan,

All about earth and eternal salvation for man.

 

Jesus was chosen, and as the Messiah he came,

Conquering evil and death through his glorious name,

Giving us hope of a wonderful life yet to be

Home in that heaven where Father is waiting for me.

Before you came to this earth you lived with your Father in Heaven where He prepared you to come here. As you came here there was a veil of forgetfulness which caused you to forget those premortal experiences for a time. This was so that you could walk fully by faith here on the earth, and though you may not remember being there, you can still feel the presence of your Father in Heaven and the pull to return back to your true home. Indeed, as Paul taught, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Romans 8:16). That Spirit encourages us to live here on earth so that we can be worthy to live there with our Father and His Beloved Son after this life. Indeed, “home is that heaven where Father is waiting for [you].”

               When Alma the Younger was in the process of repenting of his many sins he had a vision of the Lord. He recounted it this way to his son: “Yea, methought I saw, even as our father Lehi saw, God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God; yea, and my soul did long to be there” (Alma 36:22). He saw a vision of heaven with the Lord there, and I love that phrase that his soul did long to be in the presence of God. I believe that our souls today also long to be in the presence of God. That is why we want to keep His commandments and do those things that He has asked us to do now so that we can indeed be “brought back into the presence of the Lord” and stay there (Mormon 9:13). My greatest desire for our family is that we can indeed return to live with Him after this life where we can be forever together. I love the beautiful way that another song, the hymn O My Father, puts it: 

For a wise and glorious purpose

Thou hast placed me here on earth

And withheld the recollection

Of my former friends and birth;

Yet ofttimes a secret something

Whispered, “You’re a stranger here,”

And I felt that I had wandered

From a more exalted sphere.

 

When I leave this frail existence,

When I lay this mortal by,

Father, Mother, may I meet you

In your royal courts on high?

Then, at length, when I’ve completed

All you sent me forth to do,

With your mutual approbation

Let me come and dwell with you.

Always remember that indeed in this life you are a “stranger” here on earth because your true home is in heaven. Live so that when you have completed your sojourn here you can indeed “come and dwell” with Him in His exalted sphere. Know that I love you and look forward to that day when we can dwell with our Father in Heaven together, for if you weren’t there with us it wouldn’t be heaven.

Love,

Dad