Our family moved to the Dominican Republic in August of 1994. We were getting settled in our new environment, but I was feeling so lost and alone. We looked very different from everyone around us, the Dominican Spanish was difficult for me to understand, our house was in a neighborhood that was not easy to walk around in. One morning I dropped the older children off at school, and took baby Laura for a walk in the stroller at Parque Mirador, a park that runs along side and overlooked the Caribbean. I was shuffling along, feeling sorry for myself.
(Are you feeling sorry for me yet? I’m on a tropical island, walking along a path lined with palm trees and lush green vegetation, pushing a healthy, beautiful baby girl in a stroller, feeling the sweet ocean breeze and seeing the blue Caribbean in the distance? Such a sad life!) We had been living overseas for nine years at this point, and there I was, feeling sad and lonely.
I began praying…actually kind of whining, in my heart, “Heavenly Father, I feel so alone. When am I ever going to feel like I belong? When am I ever going to feel like I am home?” And then the Lord whispered to me, through the Holy Ghost, “Everyone is a stranger on earth. You won’t be home until you are home with Me.” Oh.
In that moment, I learned on a different level who I really am: I really am a daughter of God. We are ALL children of Heavenly Parents, who want us to return Home. We sing the song, “I am child of God” in Primary all the time. The song teaches truth, and it is one of the Holy Ghost’s favorite songs. How do I know? Because there can be all kinds of Primary chaos going on in the Primary room, but as soon as the children start singing “I am a child of God, and He has sent me here”, the feeling in the room changes. The children feel the truth of the words that they are singing, and it’s like the Holy Ghost has opened the door and walked in.
My assigned topic today is “how to become like Jesus Christ”, and I’m going to tell you something that might surprise you or that you might argue with.
This is the truth: because you are a child of God, you are already just like Him and like our brother and savior, Jesus Christ. In “The Family: a proclamation to the world” it says: ALL HUMAN BEINGS—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.
The following experience helps me understand this concept:
Many years ago in Florence, Italy, I saw some sculptures by Michelangelo that I will never forget. These sculptures, called the Slaves or Prisoners, are marble figures that look like they are caught in the act of freeing themselves from the stone. They look unfinished. Some believe that Michelangelo deliberately left them incomplete to represent the struggle of human beings to free themselves from worldly temptations. In fact, that was exactly Michelangelo’s philosophy: he believed that he was a tool of God, not creating anything but simply revealing the powerful figures already contained in the marble. He believed that his only task was to chip away the excess, to reveal what was already inside.
We can draw a spiritual parallel to ourselves. Because we are children of God, our spirits are divine Godly matter. We have a divine nature; we are ALREADY like Him. We can’t see that masterpiece until we remove all the things in the way. At times, all we might see is a slab of marble or a statue very much in progress—until we take away everything that isn’t us. Becoming like Christ isn’t something that we find outside of ourselves. Instead, it is something already inside of us. We deliberately and intentionally and prayerfully unwrap all the layers that keep it hidden and reveal that whole and perfect spirit that is in there.
This truth is so hopeful and liberating for me. It means that we don’t need to be someone else to be like Jesus Christ. It means that all of those Christlike attributes that we want to have: humility, obedience, kindness, courage, and love are already within us. We just need to do the work to remove the layers of impatience or disobedience or selfishness or whatever else is getting in the way.”
Another way to think of this divine Christlike nature is to consider an acorn seed.
The tiny acorn seed contains the blueprint to grow into a mighty oak tree. It pushes deep into the dirt to root itself, it seeks light and water, and little by little it becomes what it is meant to be. In a
Elder Oaks said in a conference talk , “We qualify for eternal life (and become like Christ ) through a process of conversion…. this word of many meanings signifies not just a convincing but a profound change.”
Because Christ knew exactly who He was, other people could be negative and mean to him, and he never was negative about their negativity. He genuinely loved others unconditionally. He didn’t resist what His life was meant to be, and understood His own worth so fully that He had no fear driving Him as sometimes the rest of us do. Elder Holland said, Jesus’ entire being, His complete purpose and delight, were centered in pleasing His Father and obeying His will. Of Him He seemed always to be thinking; to Him He seemed always to be praying. Unlike us, He needed no crisis, no discouraging shift in events to direct His hopes heavenward. He was already instinctively, longingly looking that way.
Michelangelo was willing to do the work of transforming a block of marble into a masterpiece of powerful art. A tiny acorn seed works very hard to grow into a mighty oak. Christ was the ultimate example of becoming who He was meant to be.
I believe that our work is to discover that divine nature within us who we truly are; to remove those worldly layers so that we can grow and experience that profound change into the person we were created to become.