Continuing from Bruce C. Hafen and a previous post. . .
Earlier I mentioned our daughter. I said I want to be “with her” always. For me, the words “with you capture the meaning of sanctification and Atonement in the simplest terms. If we do our part, Christ makes “at one” with God and like God, overcoming whatever separates us from Him. He is with us, with you not only at the end of our lives but through each day of our lives. And without Christ, we could not be without family and friends.
I first leaned about “with you” in an unexpected way. A couple of years ago Marie and I were in Sweden for the first international “Especially for Youth” (EFY) conference. As the concluding fireside, the session director asked if we would say a few words about the Atonement. In earlier years, most youth leaders would have considered that topic too serious and abstract to interest many teenagers. But we knew from having been with them for a few that this group would take that subject seriously. Still, what do you say on that sacred theme, briefly and in untranslated English, that connects with Scandinavian teens, right where they live?
As I looked at those hundreds of bright-eyed young men and women, many of them the only Church member in their schools, I thought of how much it meant for them to be together. I asked some of them that day how often they thought we should have EFY in their countries. One girl said, “I’ve never felt so good, just being with other good kids and having the Lord’s Spirit with us. I think we should do this . . .every . . . day.”
I saw on the walls some of the EFY banners with their assigned “group names” of youth teams who had been together all week. All the names used scriptural words, like brightness,” “dreamed a dream,” “highly favored,” and
“happy still.” I whispered to Marie what was for me a new idea. “You and I are a group, aren’t we? Should we have a group name?” Her eyes lit up. “How about. . .’with you?'” We agreed.
I told those young people that Marie’s and my two-person group name—“with you”— we loved being with them and two of us loved being with each other. And we knew they loved being together, drawing strength from faithful friends and steady them to stand, often alone, against the stiff winds of a worldly culture. Many devoted Young Single Adult Counselors had been “with” the youth in their groups constantly in an unforgettable, week-long gospel conversation.
Then I told them that the Atonement simply means —“with you” in two senses. First to overcome that separates you from your Heavenly Father, so we can with Him; and Christ’s Spirit can be with us—each day and forever. If we are afraid some day, as He gathers us in, we will say, “O my Father, my Father, I am with you again.” No longing is deeper than a toddler’s desire to be with his mom—nor our hunger to be with those we love. The Atonement forever fulfills those longings.
Afterward I realized that I had used those words without checking to be sure that “with you” is a scriptural phrase (which an EFY group name should be), though I knew it would be in the scriptures someplace. The sacrament prayer says “with them,” and Elijah told the young man, “They that be with us are more than they that be with them” (2 Kings 6:16). Computer search then led me to the exact words in a memorable context. In introducing the sacrament to the Nephites, Christ said, “And if ye do always remember me ye shall have my Spirit to be with you” (3 Nephi 18:11; emphasis added). So Christ first spoke the sacrament prayer as He personally taught what the sacrament is. And the promise “with you” is more than a formal prayer; it is His voice, speaking His promise of constant companionship to each of us.
“With you” also echoes Harriet Beecher Stowe’s haunting lines from “Still, Still with Thee,” which anticipates our return to God’s presence:
But sweeter still to wake and find thee there. So shall it be at last in that morning When the soul waketh and life’s shadows flee; Oh, in that hour, fairer than daylight dawning, Shall rise the glorious thought, I am with Thee! 17
Still with Thee. Still—always; and still—quiet.
Like still water, the doctrine of Christ’s peace runs deep, and it deserves to be held in the most reverence space in our hearts. And for me, “still, still with Thee” means not only with Jesus but with Marie, and our family always. My heart has no greater desire. On that day of celestial reunion we will fully comprehend what it means to be there, together, something we would never understand without having endured our long, hard journey in the earth school. I believe we will gasp as we realize we are actually there, in that place, sensing “the glorious thought, I am with thee!”
Jesus Is the Christ, the great Uniter, the Atoning One. Because of what He did, we too can be with Him; with our dearest ones, still, always, to “go no more out” (Revelations 3:12). Then the disciple’s journey’ is complete. Then the disciple will be like—and be with—his Master. ~~~Bruce C. Hafen, Spiritually Anchored in Unsettled Times p. 31-35
