Becoming One

            I have just begun to read the Old Testament. I have always been afraid of trying to understand a lot of the Old Testament mainly because of all the info and laws that are in there. It is a lot of information to try to remember at times and can get you also confused. But perhaps I have been taking it the wrong way of just trying to memorize things in it. There are some terrific things that are in there. One in particular that stood out to me was at the beginning of the book in Genesis. It is in chapter 2 verse 24 and it reads: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

When I first read this, it seemed like a "duh" moment. Of course you leave your mom and dad behind to live with your spouse. But what really caught my attention was the ending of the verse. "And they shall be one flesh". I then asked myself a question: What does it mean to be one?

There is a similar verse in the Doctrine and Covenants 38: 27 which says: "... I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine."  We are told to be one. Not separate, but all as one. But what does that mean?

I remember at the beginning of my mission, my companion and I were at a members home after helping them with cutting logs. He treated us to some grill cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, (which is probably one of the best combinations out there) and we started to talk to him about families. He was talking about how close he was to his wife compared of when he didn't have the gospel and now when he did. He brought up the Genesis scripture and explained on how he saw it. He compared it by only using his two fingers: the index finger and the middle finger.

If you look at this figure of the fingers they are separate. There is that gap in between them and they are not one. They are not together and they are distant. We don't want to be like this. We don't want to be distant from who we love. We want to be closer together and see eye-to-eye with others.

Now we see here that they are together. There is no distance really between them.This is really good compared to as before. However, although they are together, this is not the best they can do, or if we apply it to us, the best that we can do. We still don't want to have two different purposes. We want to be as one.

This should be our goal. We need to become meaning one in purpose. But how can we do this? Look at the God Head as an example. They are 3 separate beings: Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. Even though they are separate the share one in purpose. What is that purpose? Moses 1:39: For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.






Does this only apply to family? No. This can apply to the Church as well. We want to see the way God sees a situation or how he see us as individuals. My hope is that we can all make that goal to become "one" as a people and as a family. This isn't a short term goal. This is going to take time, even to the end of our lives, but we can learn a whole bunch about us and how God sees us.