“The Joyful Covenant Path,” Liahona, Feb. 2026.
The Joyful Covenant Path
The wonder and grandeur of family members bound together in the presence of the Father and the Son brings surpassing awe and joy to my soul and fills me with a spirit of gratitude.
Elder Patrick Kearon and his wife, Jennifer
When Israel and Elizabeth Haven Barlow left Nauvoo, Illinois, for the Salt Lake Valley in 1848, they left behind a baby boy buried in a small Nauvoo cemetery. Little James Nathaniel Barlow, their first child, had died shortly after birth in May 1841.
With their departure for the Salt Lake Valley, Israel and Elizabeth likely never expected to gaze again upon their son’s grave. But when Israel was called on a mission to England a few years later, he passed through Nauvoo as he traveled east. At Elizabeth’s request, he stopped to locate their son’s grave and move his remains to the main cemetery, east of town.
After a day of fruitless searching, Israel sought help from the local caretaker. The next day, they found the grave, located next to James’s cousin Mary. Tragically, the coffins were decayed and broken. In a letter to his wife, Israel wrote, “I therefore turned away and concluded that I would leave them there till the future.”
He had not walked far from the grave when he heard a voice. Recalling the experience, he wrote, “It was not audible, but so distinct to my mind that I could not gainsay it: ‘Daddy, do not leave me here.’” Israel returned to the grave, concluding to remove his little boy after all. “I felt a very peculiar calm and peace of mind which before I did not feel. … This much I will say: that I never was more conscious of any duty done in my life.”
On September 2, 1853, Israel Barlow and the caretaker moved the bodies of James and Mary to Nauvoo’s main cemetery, marking the place with “stones at the head and foot of the graves.”
Israel told Elizabeth that as he lingered at the graveside, “I felt a desire to dedicate myself and all that I might call mine into the hands of the Lord, that I might be counted worthy to come forth with [James] in the morning of the First Resurrection.”
Israel’s devotion to the gospel of Jesus Christ, coupled with honoring sacred covenants, allows Christ to make eternal life—that grandest of all blessings—possible for him, his ancestors, and his posterity.
The same is true for all of us.
Photograph by Jerry Garns, may be copied for Church use only
Sacred Promises
Our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, love each of us beyond anything we can imagine. Nowhere is Their love more manifest than through the promised blessings associated with the covenants offered to us at baptism and in the house of the Lord.
“One of the most important concepts of revealed religion is that of a sacred covenant,” President Russell M. Nelson (1924–2025) taught. “In legal language, a covenant generally denotes an agreement between two or more parties. But in a religious context, a covenant is much more significant. It is a sacred promise with God.”
Every sacred promise we make and keep blesses us. Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ want to draw us closer to Them. They want to help us learn and grow in faith and understanding. They want to endow us with heavenly power. They want us to find healing and peace in a world where such blessings remain elusive. They want us to experience joy in this life and in the life to come. Flowing from this perfect love, They offer us the opportunity to enter into a covenant bond with Them. We have the blessing of recommitting to those covenants weekly during sacrament meeting.
We partake of the sacrament in a spirit of gratitude because we have the joyful blessing of taking upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ, remembering Him and His love for us shown through the gift of His Atonement—that He suffered, bled, and died for us. The sacrament also blesses us with a weekly opportunity to show our willingness to keep His commandments, renew our covenants, and make a new covenant (see Doctrine and Covenants 20:77, 79).
“Often, I hear the expression that we partake of the sacrament to renew covenants made at baptism. While that’s true, it’s much more than that,” said President Nelson. “I’ve made a new covenant. You have made new covenants. … Now in return for which [the Lord] makes the statement that we will always have His Spirit to be with us. What a blessing!”
When we repent and partake of the sacrament with a pure heart, we receive the Holy Ghost and are “cleansed from sin as if we were baptized again. This is the hope and mercy Jesus offers each one of us.”
What a joy to repent and be forgiven through Christ’s redeeming love!
Photograph of Nauvoo Illinois Temple by Jennifer Rose Maddy
His House of Joy
After becoming President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Nelson spoke often about the covenant path, starting with his first public message as President of the Church. We enter that path through “repentance and baptism by water” (2 Nephi 31:17), he said on a later occasion, and “then we enter it more completely in the temple.”
Just as partaking of the sacrament reminds us of our covenants and their attendant blessings, so does doing vicarious work in the temple. As we perform ordinances by proxy for those who have passed on, we remember the sacred promises we have made and the promised blessings we will receive.
Through the covenant path, we become heirs to all the blessings promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their posterity. Despite those promised blessings, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not lead easy lives, and neither do we. Like them, we face adversity, chastening, and loss as we are “tried in all things” (Doctrine and Covenants 136:31; see also 101:4–5). But like prophets and righteous Saints of old, we know in whom we can trust (see 2 Nephi 4:19).
Our mortal life is but a moment in our existence, but that moment—sometimes very difficult—is of eternal importance. Yes, our Heavenly Father wants us to learn and grow. And, yes, that growth at times entails disappointment and suffering. But He wants our lives to be beautiful and hopeful. To that end, and to ease our journey back to Him, He has provided a Savior, who is “the guarantor” of our covenants with His Father. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, the Father fulfills the promises made to His children in the temple.
Through His love and atoning sacrifice, our Savior has dealt with and healed everything we will encounter in life. And because of His holy house—His house of joy—all will be well despite adversity. The balm of covenant keeping sweeps away sorrow, pain, grief, and disappointment. We need not worry or fear. Rather, we can rejoice that the price of our redemption has been paid (see 1 Corinthians 6:20) and that the covenant path to eternal life has been laid.
The covenant path truly is a path of redeeming love. As we honor covenants we make in the temple, we receive blessings of greater power, greater love, greater mercy, greater understanding, and greater hope. The wonder and grandeur of temple sealings—of family members bound together in love for all eternity—brings surpassing awe and joy to my soul and fills me with a spirit of gratitude.
“Whenever any kind of upheaval occurs in your life, the safest place to be spiritually is living inside your temple covenants!” President Nelson counseled. I know from my own sweet and at times bitter mortal experience the truthfulness of those words.
James Nathaniel Barlow, the first child of Israel and Elizabeth Barlow, died shortly after birth in May 1841. Years later, he was sealed by proxy to his parents in the Logan Utah Temple.
Illustration by Allen Garns
Gather Them Home
After Israel Barlow bade one last farewell to his little boy, he wrote to his wife, “The thoughts of absenting myself far away, never more in life to return to [James’s] grave, wrung the last thread of affection I bore till it was broken with tears on his grave.”
I imagine that more tears—tears of joy this time—were shed on December 4, 1889. On that day, little James Nathaniel Barlow was sealed to his parents in the Logan Utah Temple. By then, Israel had passed away, so others stood as proxy for him and James.
Sister Kearon and I have a particular sensitivity and great compassion for Israel and Elizabeth. Our first child, a boy named Sean, died during heart surgery when he was just three weeks old. This was an earth-shattering loss for us. At the time, we wondered if we could survive. We buried him in a painfully small grave in England. Fifteen years later, our family was asked to move from our home in the United Kingdom to serve full time in the Church, and we left that little grave behind.
We didn’t lose our baby on the trek west, and we didn’t suffer the incomprehensible hardships of the Barlows, but we have the beginning of an understanding of what they went through. Our baby boy’s grave is very far away, yet like the Barlows, we have abiding faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the eternal nature of our family through the holy sealing covenant.
We all have ancestors and other loved ones beyond the grave who are saying to us, “Do not leave me here.” Because of temple covenants, no one need be left behind. Our call is to love them, serve them, and help gather them home.
Our Heavenly Father loves us, you and me. He has given us temples so that “whatsoever [we] bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:8; see also Matthew 18:18). He sent His Son to break the bands of death, paving the way for everlasting ties and eternal family reunions.
That is why we have ordinances. That is why we make covenants. That is why we build temples. That is why we dedicate ourselves to God’s work and glory (see Moses 1:39). And that is why we shed tears of joy, knowing that an eternal reunion awaits us and our loved ones in the presence of the Father and the Son.
May we find joy and peace as we keep our covenants and join the Lord in His glorious saving work.