MARRIAGE FOR TIME AND ETERNITY

by: Norberto Betita

Sealing Room Vancouver British Columbia Temple

During one of our institute class our teacher tried to explain that there are many people who asked about how long is eternity? He explained that eternity is indeed without end, but just to satisfy the longing of the mind for an answer to a long insistent question he further explained that eternity is like a boulder of the hardest stone having a size of one cubic mile. Once every year a very small bird comes to the stone to sharpen her tiny beak. When the large stone is consumed by the continued sharpening of the little bird, then that will be the end of eternity.

I once knelt on the holy altar inside the sealing room in the House of the Lord, where my wife and I were again pronounced as husband and wife, no longer till death do us part, but for time and all eternity, and our children sealed to us forever. Then we together stood between the mirrors of eternity in that holy room after the sealing ordinance for our family.  Upon those large mirrors I saw the unbroken and unending reflections of our most happy faces. It was in such a most solemn setting that I understood best the meaning of eternity more than any words or phrase could explain. My thoughts go beyond the bounds of mortality towards the glorious promise of eternity for me and my family to be united together to live forever and ever.

As I reflected on these experiences I am reminded of an account in the New Testament while Jesus was travelling “...into the costs of Judea by the farther side of Jordan...”

“And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? Tempting him.

“And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you?

“And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.

“And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.

“But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;

“And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.

“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10: 1-9).

It is made clear to me that from the very beginning marriage was ordained of God, and it is meant to endure forever. If all along the voyage of mortality men in carnality changed the practice in accordance with the precept of the fallen man, still the original and unsullied doctrine of marriage as declared by the Lord has never changed. When a man and woman is united in a marriage relationship and become as ‘one flesh’, it means, there should be no dividing, no isolating, no separating, no disentanglement. To do so is to tear and injure the fleshy tissues tied together by one strong marital bond.  And so it cuts the joy and gladness once enjoyed and rips the hearts of sons and daughters, the wonderful fruits of marriage.

To be ‘one flesh’ means loving and submitting to each spouse and treating each other as their own body.  It is nourishing and cherishing and respecting. It is living in unity, harmony and peace. It is blindness to each other’s faults and deafness to words that annoy.  It is about the husband doing the cooking when the wife is laundering, it is babysitting while the wife is marketing, and it simply means sharing each other’s responsibility in the home and family.

Marriage for time and all eternity is an ordinance performed in the Holy Temple of God for those who had been duly qualified to receive such. It is to bind a man and woman in an everlasting covenant which as according to the Lord, no man should ‘put asunder’. This is the common goal of the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This marital union, however, is never exempted from the wiles of the devil, the winds of adversity, and the enduring trials of mortality which is a requirement for refinement and sanctification. On the other hand it is also given the promise of happiness, tranquility and brightness of hope predicated for obedience, faithfulness, uprightness, and total commitment to the eternal covenant. This marriage is the foundation and corridor to eternal joy and exaltation.