Thoughts on Immortality

Recently, my wife and I rode through the cemetery past her parents’ graves, and as we drove around and past the graves of others, including President Lorenzo Snow, my mind turned to the people who are interred there. I thought about them living and loving, and earning a living, about their joys and sorrows, about their children and the legacy they might have left. Some folks had small stones, and some were considerably bigger and more ostentatious than President Snow’s stone. I wondered if their stone represented the only heritage they had to offer those left behind.


None of us can leave a lasting impression in mortality unless we can create something that survives beyond our passing. Some great artists or sculptors or architects leave their work long after they go on. Others leave a foundation or charity that will donate their millions on an ongoing basis. Some build buildings and attach their name to them. Others endow scholarships or professorial chairs at some university. These are all worthwhile and commendable.

It seems to me, though, that these are but mortal remains from which it is difficult to judge the character or sincerity or integrity of the giver. It is equally difficult to judge (nor should we) the intent with which these gifts are given.

Many people pass through mortality without leaving anything measurable by worldly standards. Often, though, they do leave their stamp on others around them; their children, their friends, their life as an example. They live the gospel, they teach their children, and they serve, creating for themselves and their posterity an eternal legacy also immeasurable by earthly standards. The poet Wordsworth has written,

That best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and love.

Lloyd D. Newell, in his book, The Divine Connection: Understanding Your Inherent Worth, said:

Often small and almost habitual acts of service can bring us more fulfillment than many of the more visible and celebrated contributions. I know a woman who frequently leaves work a few minutes early so she can check the parking meters near her office building and put money in those that have expired. She walks along the curbside and puts loose change in the meters, getting a special thrill from helping people she does not even know and who will probably never even realize she helped them. Kind acts have become so much a part of her character that she is simply in the habit of helping others in her own quiet, anonymous way.

This is the real legacy that any person should seek in this life-- eternal salvation through service and love -- the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s why we are here. It’s why we strive and work and struggle with mortality. It’s why we serve others. As King Benjamin said:

And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God. (Mosiah 2:17)

We can also seek the sweet rest that the Father has promised us through loving and teaching our children. President Harold B. Lee said:

…do you realize that the most important part of the Lord's work that you will do, is the work that you do within the walls of your own home?

President McKay has taught:

Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home.

President Spencer W. Kimball has pronounced the family:

…our chief source of physical, emotional, and moral strength.

So it seems then, that our quest for remembrance should turn outward from ourselves to selfless service and giving. Elder Marion D. Hanks explained:

In service, in sharing, in giving, are we not representing in its highest and holiest form the path of the Savior? When we make a commitment to give what we have to give, to serve usefully, are we not following in His path and pattern?

Hugh B. Brown, in his book, The Abundant Life, teaches us that:
Man is an eternal being-physical, mental, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual. Moreover, man is the son of God and that means that there is something of Him in every man. Our purpose in life is to develop that which is God-like in us, overcome the downdrag of mortality and achieve immortality and eternal life.
Perhaps we can conclude, then, that true immortality comes through The Great Plan of the Eternal God (Alma 34:9), through the gospel of Jesus Christ, through selfless service, through self-sacrifice and enduring (enjoying) to the end. St. Augustine said:

…true immortality, true incorruptibility, true unchangeableness, is eternity itself.

When the endowment money is all spent, when the great buildings named for their constructors have crumbled, when our own dwellings have fallen down, when our mortal body is tired and worn, what do we have left? President David O. McKay’s thoughts are these:

True immortality is found only in the persistence of personality after death. Confident that he would thus live after his body had ceased to function in the physical world, John Quincy Adams thus expressed himself to a friend on immortality. When the friend inquired how he was, the venerable man replied:Thank you! John Quincy Adams himself is well, sir, quite well, I thank you. But the house in which he lives at present is becoming dilapidated. It is tottering upon its foundations. Time and the seasons have nearly destroyed it. The roof is pretty well worn out. Its walls are much shattered, and it trembles with every wind. The old tenement is becoming almost uninhabitable, and I think John Quincy Adams will have to move out of it soon; but he himself is quite well, sir, quite well.

So, as President McKay suggests, and John Quincy Adams reiterates, as mortality crumbles around us, our eternal and immortal progress awaits, and is not dependent solely on the impression we leave in mortality, but rather on our desire to live the gospel and honor our Elder Brother and our Eternal Father. It is their approbation we seek. Our bodies will be reunited with our spirits, and if we have lived to so merit, we will progress eternally in the Presence of God the Father and His son, our Savior and Redeemer. Let us so live as to be worthy of the transcendent opportunity the gospel presents to us.