Sacramental Moments

Last week we had the opportunity to attend the blessing of our first grandson, Ryker Chad Moore. We've waited along time for this precious soul to join our family. Baby blessings are always special experiences, but this one more than usual. The fact that Ryker is ours had a lot to do with the feelings I had, but recently I read Elder Holland's Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments for Pathway. He taught,

"For our purpose here today, a sacrament could be any one of a number of gestures or acts or ordinances that unite us with God and his limitless powers. We are imperfect and mortal; he is perfect and immortal. But from time to time--indeed, as often as is possible and appropriate--we find ways and go to places and create circumstances where we can unite symbolically with him, and in so doing gain access to his power. Those special moments of union with God are sacramental moments--such as kneeling at a marriage altar, or blessing a newborn baby, or partaking of the emblems of the Lord's supper. This latter ordinance is the one we in the Church have come to associate most traditionally with the word sacrament, though it is technically only one of many such moments when we formally take the hand of God and feel his divine power.

"These are moments when we quite literally unite our will with God's will, our spirit with his spirit, where communion through the veil becomes very real. At such moments we not only acknowledge his divinity, but we quite literally take something of that divinity to ourselves. Such are the holy sacraments."

Last Thursday the veil was thin, we felt a sense of the divine and God did share his power. Chad and Elizabeth's home was a holy place as Chad held Ryker in his arms, joined by family and friends who bear the priesthood of God and gave him a name and a blessing.