The cemetery in Sigurd, Utah is only about 100 square yards.
Its biggest claim to fame is that it is the resting place of some Mormon
pioneers, though none of them is well-known. Had I driven by Sigurd a few weeks
earlier, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed the town, let alone stopped at
its cemetery. Yet, in that moment, I stood by the Dastrup family plot, and felt
the stirrings of something eternal. My wife, Danielle, is a Dastrup. Through
marriage, the people buried in this quaint country graveyard were now my
people. Their blood would flow in my children’s veins. This sense of intimate
connection stood starkly in contrast with my previous ignorance and disregard
for all things Sigurd.
I think this experience demonstrates something fundamental
about the Gospel of Jesus Christ: We are invited to view others (and ultimately
everyone) as family—intimately connected to us, and tied to our history and
future. I see this in a simple way every Sunday when I attend a Mormon church
in Belmont, MA and hear the members refer to each other as “Brother” or
“Sister.” And it is not simply nominal. When Danielle and I first moved here
from the West, we were happily surprised at how welcoming everyone was. Within
the first few weeks, we had been invited to dinner, game nights, clam bakes,
etc. Although we had never met before, these people welcomed us into their
homes and into their lives as if we were visiting relatives. And we began to
respond in kind. This last week, we received an email explaining that, after a
period of remission, the leukemia had returned in the son of a couple in our
ward. They asked for us to fast and pray in his behalf. We had never met this
person, but we found ourselves fasting and praying for healing, comfort, and
peace for this family. Our association with the ward connected us to the
suffering of these people we hardly knew. But we sensed, at some level, that we
were family, so we joined with them in fasting and prayer.
This intimate interconnectedness is intended not only for
the “ward family.” Ultimately, we are invited to view everyone—classmates, colleagues,
co-commuters, and counter clerks—as siblings: children of God and joint-heirs
with Christ. I fall miserably short most of time, instead viewing these people
like I used to view the Sigurd graveyard—quaint fixtures in the side roads of
life, minor characters in the grand narrative of me. But there are moments that
poke through my egotistical paradigm, and I stand once again in Sigurd cemetery
and think, “These are my people.”
My marriage has already begun to urge me along this path in
many ways. And that is, I think, the dynamic that made us want to create this
blog. In some small way, we wanted to capture how the covenants we made when we
were married have helped us look beyond ourselves and see others as intimately
connected and related to us. One simple way we see this is in the new
fellowship between Sabeys and Messinas. These two families that, before our
wedding, would have passed each other in the road with nothing more than a polite
wave, now know and love each other. Matt and James are roommates, Daniel and
Emily might take a class together at BYU, and there is even talk about a
Sabey-Messina ski trip one of these days. We feel like we are witnessing on a
small scale the unity God intends for all His children: no more strangers and
foreigners, but fellow citizens in the household of God (Ephesians 2:19).
