“For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy right hand shall we see light.” ~Psalm 36:9
Jeffrey R. Holland teaching from the above quote wrote: Darkness is often literally and metaphorically the enemy. Lucifer is considered the prince of darkness and hell itself is portrayed as a dark and dismal setting, a place where there is no light. Sometimes our mortal lives are so difficult that it feels that hope has fled and we are left to stumble on in darkness.
How important it is early in our lives, then, for us to learn that in the light of God, the light of Christ, the light of the Spirit, not only will we experience light itself, but it shall be the source of illumination for everything else upon which we gaze.
The redemptive role of the light of Christ is an important doctrine in the restored gospel.100 We believe that every single individual born into this world carries and keeps that light in his or her soul, no matter what time or transgression might do in an attempt to extinguish it. It cannot be fully extinguished. If we give that light a chance, it will be the means of seeing light. It will grow to become the everlasting light by which all men, women, and children can recognize the truth, respond to it and make covenants with the Lord.
After this world in which we so much need pure and true light to help us find our way and read the meaning in things, kingdoms of glory await us that are symbolically characterized by additional degrees of glory—the light of the stars, the light of the moon, and ultimately, the light of the sun.101 Indeed the light surrounding the Father and the Son was described by the Prophet Joseph Smith as being above the brightness of the sun.”
If you have fears about loved ones who are currently darkened, hope on. The light emanating from “the fountain of life” quickens that corresponding light in each of us if we will but allow it to do so. I have felt darkness and pled for redeeming light. It has always come—surely, steadily, eventually.
“He is the light and life of the world; yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened.”103
By His light we still see light—and can walk in it—forever. ~Jeffrey R. Holland, For Times of Trouble, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), 76-77
