Our Prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley, Is Dead

My cousins waited for five hours to see his body. The line of people shuffled along a city street for a dozen blocks, coming to pay their respects.

Lauren said he was so short. "His coffin was this big." She said, stretching her hands out. "And he wasn't wearing his glasses." A little old man, dead, his body wrapped in the robes of the holy priesthood.

He was the High Priest of the church of Jesus Christ. He was the mouthpiece of God on earth. He was funny. He was gone.

Thousands came to pay their respects. Others to catch a last, or perhaps a first, glimpse of a man who had inspired them, and taught them the words of Christ. But he wasn't there. He had left to go join his dear missed wife who had died a few years ago.

Those many people saw only a body, which formerly housed the spirit of a great man. The body was short, having never grown tall, and shrunken by the years. It was wrinkled, with creases from the many laughs upon its cheeks, and creases upon the brow from the burden of working for God. The body was shaped by the man who had used it, as was his recently departed spirit.

His body grew wrinkled and calloused from the toil he chose to do. But his spirit grew strong, burning bright with the testimony of Christ and of His restored church. Though the short, wrinkled body didn't show it, a great man had died. His glorious spirit departed from the worn out body, to join the throng of those who had also worn out their lives in the work of salvation.

Thousands came to pay their respects, to catch a glimpse of the body of Gordon B. Hinckley. But Hinckley had gone. Gone to pay his respects to the man who had called him, to see his marvelous, resurrected body, and to thank him for the day that will come.

That day, when all shall rise anew from the grave, spirits combined with perfected bodies, free from sin, to be forever with their loved ones, and God whom they served.