Sanctuary

My wife and I recently bought Les Miserables on vudu, an internet movie service, so we can watch it anytime we want.  My wife and children have watched it 5 times in the last week.  I love the book but could easily live a long and happy life never again suffering through another musical.
But the thought did occur to me after watching the movie that Jean Valjean seeks out churches when he is in need of sanctuary.  During many key points in the story he seeks out sanctuary in the church and is given it.
The first time he does this after he breaks parole, he steals the silver of the church and when the police bring him back to the church the Bishop tells the police he gave them to Valjean and furthermore he says that Valjean forgot two candle sticks.  Much in the same spirit as when Jesus said "And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also."  And "And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain."
And the Bishop tells Valjean that he has saved his soul for God.
It then occurred to me that what we all seek from church, from the gospel, is sanctuary.  Freedom from the instability of life in a constantly changing world.  From pain, disease, injury, poverty and ultimately death.  In life nothing is permanent.  Not our pain or our pleasures last forever.  And so we seek permanence, we seek eternity.  The place most of humanity has found that peace, that sanctuary, has been in religion.
It is what provides us a haven to escape to, to nurse our wounds or to commune with loved ones long since gone, to commune with and experience God himself.
But the only true way to attain the permanence that the sanctuary of the Gospel can be is to truly accept the atonement.  Learning to truly accept the atonement you can finally break the bonds of karma so to speak.  Good and bad, and rise above it into a place of bliss, a place of permanent rejoicing and solitude.  A place in the presence of our God and our family, friends and everyone who has ever and will ever live.  The human family as one, a home coming.
There are those who reject the atonement.  Like Siddhartha in Herman Hesse's famous book, some stray from the righteous path and fall into drunkeness and over indulgence in food and gambling.  Fast cars and faster women.  And much like Siddhartha I did the same, but just as Siddhartha eventually did, I found my way back on the path and was much more righteous and Christ conscious than I ever had been before, I was a better Mormon, a better Christian, a better devotee, a better disciple and a better man as a result.  The path I followed is the one that benefited me more than the prescribed path.  But as long as you get where you need to be you can say that the path you took is the path you needed to take.
I cam to a fork in the woods, I took the path less traveled and I am all the better for it. Robert Frost.
Sometimes those who wander are not lost and sometimes those who stray come around again someday.  You are never so lost that you can not be found, you are never so low that you can not be lifted up.  The atonement of Jesus is the gift that saves continually.  You never know when your allotted time here on Earth is up but just when I thought I'd missed the bus God sent me another and another and I eventually caught one.  It's not that we get an infinite number of chances but we continually get them until we truly learn to accept them.
I've often said all you need is love and the best way to think of that is that there is no greater love than that expressed by Jesus through the atonement.
But to truly accept the atonement means you must express for others and for yourself, the love that Jesus expressed for us all.  All the compassion, the understanding, the patience and the forgiveness Jesus is famous for is now your duty to share with others.  His disciples will be known by their love.  Not by the types of prayers they offer, not by their dress, or their hairstyles, whether they shave or do not but by their love for others.  The purity and quality of the love you have to offer is the litmus test by which your discipleship is measured by Jesus himself.
Love is the key.  Because whatever the question is love is the answer.