BELONGING AND THE ABRAHAMIC COVENANT
We all long to belong. We are wired for connection. Think of the holidays coming up. Who do you want to be with? Where do you feel most comfortable, loved and accepted? Who makes you feel safe, warm, peaceful and loved? Who do you trust? Just thinking about those people makes me feel good. This doesn’t mean that there are never problems and misunderstandings with our loved ones. The process of working out problems or simply accepting differences can create connection.
I’m so grateful for belonging to a large extended family, with noise, misunderstandings and all the loveliness. Often, as I lay in bed at night, I see in my mind their individual faces. I pray for them. I smile and feel satisfied. I love to belong to them. I am also grateful for my friends, who bring me joy and wisdom. I’m grateful to belong to the human family, with so many things in common.
I am especially grateful to belong to a Heavenly Family, with Heavenly Parents.
I was studying about the family of Abraham. Jews, Muslims and Christians claim Abraham as their father. Abraham was promised special blessings from Heavenly Father, through covenant. We can be part of those blessings, if we choose to.
Abraham was promised land. I love land. I love the earth. My husband and I have made every kind of investment over the years. Our best investment has always been land. I’m grateful for land.
Abraham was promised a great posterity, which was a long time coming. His wife Sarah was 100 years old when she begat Isaac. And from Isaac came many nations. I’m grateful for my posterity.
Abraham was promised that his posterity would be a light to others, to help gather others to God, that His people would also be the salt of the earth, a pure people, a treasure to serve Him and His children.
Heavenly Father also promised: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34) What a beautiful blessing!
He promised that those who abide in the covenant will be the elect of God. How would you like God to vote for you in an election. That would display His confidence in you. He said of those in His covenant “I am married unto you…and I will bring you to Zion.” (Jeremiah 3:14) I think of marriage in terms of love, loyalty, nurturing, support, mercy and belonging. These are also the characteristics of Zion, being of one heart and one mind and no poor among us.
Through the covenant, God promised He would put His law in our inward parts and write it in our hearts. I love to visualize His two beautiful and great commandments of love written in my heart, that I might have the pure love of Christ imbedded in my inward parts. On the two great commandments of loving God and loving our fellow human beings, hang all the law and the prophets.
Abraham was told “I will bless thee above measure.” (Abraham 2:9)
We can have these same promises and more if we choose to belong to Heavenly Father’s covenant.
How?
Remember Him.
Do His work.
Minister to His children.
Keep the Sabbath holy.
Serve Him at all cost.
Join ourselves to Him.
Choose to belong to Him.
It doesn’t require perfection now. It means to “let God prevail” to “let Him be the most powerful influence in our lives”, to choose Him “even when we are exhausted or feeling alone or misunderstood”. (see President Russell M. Nelson, Let God Prevail, Ensign magazine, November 2020)
