Psalms 95-96

(November 13, 2014)

                Moses never saw the Promised Land (except from afar).  Those children of Israel who traveled in the desert for 40 years almost all didn’t see the Promised Land.  Do we think that Moses, though his temporal goal was never reached, missed out on Exaltation?  I think we can all acknowledge that he did receive his Exaltation (and the Mount of Transfiguration, I believe, proves that point).  Certainly there are any number of other good and decent people who participated in the Exodus who were denied the opportunity to reach the Promised Land but who now glory in the presence of God and have received a Celestial reward.

                This is important to remember.  We have no promise that we will receive our temporal promise land.  There may be goals that we desire – righteous and good goals – that may be forever out of our reach.  Whether those goals are temporal, financial, or even goals related to marriage or family – we will almost assuredly fall short of achieving some or all of our temporal goals.  But the important thing to remember is that these temporal goals are not what are important – it is our spiritual development that matters.  It is hard to recognize this in the moment when we experience the loss of temporal goals (or, especially, during times of extreme temporal setbacks) but it is far better to experience a temporal loss than a spiritual one – and our mortal promise land we may live in for a century but our spiritual promise land will make that century appear as the blink of an eye.