He Paid the Price for All

02/03/2014

Well, I just want to write a little bit this week.  I had an experience this week that really made me think about what comes after this life. I won’t share [details] unfortunately, but know this, it was pretty crazy. Anyway, I thought a lot about what comes after this life, and how different it is for people.  Death has never been something that has caused me too much stress.  I’ve never been worried about my own life, or the lives of my family. Now before everyone thinks I’m insensitive, let me explain.  It’s because I know that this life is not all. I wouldn’t be completely devastated if someone close to me left this life, because I know I’ll see them again.  I know that whatever happens to my family we can live together again after this life, if we are righteous. That’s the goal!  

I also received a package and had the chance to read over some of the talks my family sent me. One of which was on the topic of grace.  Now I’ve never understood grace until now.  Something that really struck me as interesting was that he said, Christ didn’t pay for a part of our sins and we had to be obedient and try and be good to pay the rest.  He paid for all of it.  We can do nothing to pay him back for that, or even try and pay our part.  He only asks us to follow Him in return. That is grace.  I had never understood that word.  But now I do.  How merciful is our brother, Jesus Christ, that He paid the price for all and only asks that we follow Him.  And yet we can’t even do that sometimes.                 

Now to tie this all in with death, I also received a talk about how the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to do and become.  In the Book of Mormon it teaches us “this life is the time to prepare to meet God”.  The key word is prepare.  When I prepared for my mission it took a lot of time.  And in the scriptures it says this life.  Our whole life is the time we have to prepare; the only time.  We should always be working to become like Jesus Christ and prepare to stand before God in the last day.  Maybe this is why death seems so small to me. It is hard to remember all that during the day, but when you think of the eternal picture and why we are here, it seems so insignificant.  But it is impossible to always make a complete upward progress in life.  There are always downs, unfortunately much of it is self-inflicted by our sins.  That is when the grace of Jesus Christ becomes something necessary.   He has paid all so we can have that progress again, even after we make mistakes.  How grateful I am for that. All He has asked is that we try to follow [Him] and make progress each day.  Anyway, that’s my thought.  Love you all and miss ya!  And as always, I love the work!

Elder Ollis