Love Your Body

Today I invite you to meditate a bit on why you should love and appreciate your body.   Elder Boyd K. Packer said that the body is the instrument of the spirit and that the body has delicate physical senses that have to do with spiritual communication.  Let’s first consider what it means to be an instrument. 

If you have a nail that you want to put into a piece of wood, you are going to find that it’s impossible to do without having something to hit the nail with.  No matter how much you hold that nail in your hand and push it and even pound on the wood, the nail is not going to go into the wood, but if you hold the nail against the wood with one hand and carefully and precisely hit the nail on the head with the correct instrument, such as a hammer, the nail will go into the wood without much trouble at all. 

The instrument provides power and makes accomplishing the task simple, natural and smooth – if you know how to correctly use the instrument.  Such is the relationship between our spirit and our body.  Once the spirit gains control of the body, understands how to treat it and use it, the spirit has an added dimension of strength and power.  The body is the tool or instrument that the spirit needs to bring about its purposes, to accomplish its goals.

Relative to the spiritual communication, feeling the Holy Ghost is a spiritual experience, but it is a physical feeling.  People describe it as a warm, full feeling, even a pressure in the chest.  It radiates warmth throughout the torso, sometimes a tingling sensation.  It wells up in some people to the point that they can’t sit still and keep quiet.  They feel compelled to speak up.  We say we were prompted.  It is as though something has pushed us from within.  This is possibly happening in the mind as well, the pushing and thinking that we should say or do something, but in my experience, once I thought about it, I have noticed there is also a physical aspect to the promptings.  Sometimes the experience with the Holy Ghost causes one to tremble, shake or cry -- again, physical manifestations of a spiritual experience. 

I challenge you to remember times when you have felt the Spirit, when you have felt especially close to God, when you have really been moved by a sermon or something you have read.  Think about how you actually felt.  You can even think about how much you love someone.  These are things we have thought of as being in our thoughts and in our emotions, but if you pay attention to how you feel, you will realize that the feelings are physical. 

Now try to imagine what it would feel like without a body.  What would that love or joy or peace feel like if you didn’t have your physical body to feel the warmth, the expansion, the tingling, the quickening breath? 

That is why our soul has a physical component.  That is why we are more blessed and more powerful as embodied spirits than those who are without the physical aspect of their being.  That is why those spirits who are separated from their bodies and are awaiting the resurrection feel as though they are in bondage (D&C 45:17). 

So no matter what shape your body is in, love it, appreciate it and care for it.  You will miss it when it’s gone.  You will long to be returned to it.  It is a beautiful gift of our Heavenly Father that brings with it many challenges and a lot of opposition to our desire to be spiritually-minded, but this life gives us the opportunity to truly become masters of our own vessel if we allow the Spirit to be our guide.