Since I was a young girl I have been obsessed with time. I remember being very young and asking my mother about eternity. Being a girl who measured things in increments specifically designed to keep time, the concept eluded me. I couldn’t get my head around it and still to this day I struggle to understand a concept so vague and indefinable.
This morning I was reading in the Book of Mormon and was around the end of 3rd Nephi and 4th Nephi. It is where Christ visits the Americas, ordains apostles, performs miracles, and then leaves. I am always in awe at the state of Zion they describe and then just as quickly appalled to realize that in less than 200 years they go back to having Nephites and Lamanites as well as more than the one church Christ had established with his own hands and priesthood power.
I read a book about the Holocaust recently, and it is with this same sense of disgust that I am horrified to realize that this happened less than a hundred years ago, less than seventy five years ago. This happened in my mother’s lifetime. Even more horrifying is that the Germans got this concept from us, the Americans. In the early 1900’s America had thirty some states that allowed eugenics to be performed. Not only are these things laced throughout our history, but only so recently has racism and other important horrible cultural issues of our time been eliminated. When you think that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has only been restored around 178 years, the 200 hundred year change from Christ and Zion to everyday mediocrity doesn’t seem so quick after all.
When I think of a life 200 years from now I don’t know what they will think of us. And I am not sure what era I will be grouped with. But as I imagine this future one reality remains the same - no matter what I can’t avoid being grouped with human eugenics, racism, and major wars being fought worldwide. Maybe we are more like the Nephites and Lamanites than I ever imagined. Maybe the concept of time that has preoccupied my mind for so long, I will never wrap my brain around. Time will forever elude me. Because time is all just relative and eternity is just a little easier to grasp after all.
Love Bugs
3 months ago
2 comments:
Wow Mary that was really insightful to read, thank you! That's so true when you put it that way, with the holocaust not even a hundred years ago, wow that's weird to think and kind of scary too.
Lots to think about. I, too, wonder what others will think of us and wonder what my children will think when they look back on my lifetime as well.
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