Life By Lindsey Rae

Today I spent a lot of the afternoon watching the live broadcast of the funeral of President Gordon B, Hinkley and also some of the memorial tributes to him that were running on BYU-TV.

The service that was held, was, of course, very nice and the spirit of the truthfulness of him being a true prophet of God was definitely felt by all it was definitely felt. It was so great to hear from some of the General Authorities of the church, including President Monson, who will become our next latter-day prophet and president of the church. At the end of the service they showed some video clips of him humbly visiting the members of the church in many places worldwide. And then his greatness was shown; even receiving the highest honors from the President of the United States. The thought then came to me that after seeing just those few short video clips, it would be nearly impossible to deny that a man of God, even a prophet had not just been shown. He could have been no less than a prophet of God.
I felt so sad when I heard President Hinckley had died last week. I felt I wasn't finished having him here! I will miss hearing him speak and his sense of humor and feeling the love he has for the church. He was president of the church for 12 years, which was really most of my impressionable years growing up. As one of the general authorities who spoke today put it, the youth really felt like he was "their prophet," which I think was true. Because, for my generation, he was the prophet that most of us grew up with, so I think we feel a keen sense of closeness to him. And when I was a teenager, it seemed like we had a lot of firesides where he often spoke specifically to the youth and I always thought that was pretty neat that the Prophet thought we as youth were important enough to come speak to us so often.

Throughout the week as I've thought about the blessing of having a prophet today and President Hinckley's guidance to us specifically in the last 12 years, the words to this hymn came to my mind often:

We thank thee, oh God, for a prophet to guide us in these latter-days.
We thank thee for sending the gospel to lighten our minds with it rays.
We thank thee for every blessing bestowed by thy bounteous hand.
We feel it a pleasure to serve thee and love to obey thy command.

When dark clouds of trouble hang o'er us and threaten our peace to destroy,
There is hope smiling brightly before us, and we know that deliverance is nigh.
We doubt not the Lord nor his goodness, we've proved him in days that are passed.
The wicked who fight against Zion will surely be smitten at last.

We'll sing of his goodness and mercy. We'll praise him by day and by night
Rejoice in his glorious gospel, and bask in its life giving light.
Thus onto eternal perfection, the honest and faithful will go,
While they who reject this glad message, shall never such happiness know.