“Return with Honor,” Liahona, Sept. 1995, 5
Return with Honor
Adapted from an April 1990 general conference address.
As a young man, I served in the U.S. Air Force as a jet-fighter pilot. We spent hours in a training device that simulated real flight. There an instructor taught us about emergencies that could occur when flying at the speed of sound and about what we must do to avoid disaster.
One young man in my flight-training unit refused to listen to those with more knowledge and experience. When it was time for him to go to the trainer and learn emergency procedures, he went to the swimming pool, pistol range, or golf course, instead.
A few months later, my friend’s plane caught fire on a night flight. If he had trained seriously, his response would have been automatic. He would have ejected, as his copilot did. But he tried to land the plane and crashed. He died because he had not learned to leave danger immediately.
Our unit motto, displayed on the side of our aircraft, was Return with Honor. This motto can be applied to each of us. I can picture our Father in Heaven putting his arms around each of us as we left his presence and whispering, “Return with honor.”
How do we return to our Heavenly Father with honor?
Just as aircraft pilots must obey certain rules in order to avoid disaster, we must understand and obey certain laws, ordinances, and covenants as we go through this earth life. We must have an automatic response when trouble and temptation come our way.
The Lord has told us plainly, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). If we do keep the commandments, we will return with honor to the presence of our Heavenly Father.
Illustrated by Rick Graham