How do you feel when you’re about to embark on a new journey or experience? This year, I volunteered to help with events hosted by a local foster care agency, and I attended an information meeting at the beginning of the summer. On my way there, my stomach felt unsettled, but I understood the source of the discomfort: I was going to a place I hadn’t been to before, meeting with people I didn’t know, and trying something new. I acknowledged the feeling and moved on. So far it’s been a great experience to be involved.

Of course, this wasn’t some significant undertaking. Not like leaving home for two years as a young adult to preach the gospel in a foreign country. The funny thing is that I don’t remember feeling nervous or anxious to do that, though I’m sure I was. I do remember being excited to go, in spite of the fact that I was leaving behind everyone and everything familiar to me, and I was still a very shy person.

In two recorded instances in the Gospels, Jesus referred to Himself as the Bridegroom or spoke in parables about marriages, implying that the children of Israel are the bride. As revealed to John later, in the Savior’s Second Coming, He will arrive to unite with His Church: “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints” (Revelation 19:7–8).

At the same time as He invites His Church to come to Him collectively, Jesus invites us individually to enter a covenant relationship with Him that can be compared in many ways to that of marriage. One of those ways is professing willingness to take His name upon us when we are baptized and thereby join His Church.

When Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you” (Matthew 11:29), He was inviting us to enter a relationship with Him by making gospel covenants. His strength then becomes our strength, His power our power; therefore, He added, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (v. 30) because He is there to carry it with us.

However, there are times where it can feel like I don’t have much strength at all, that my weaknesses are too great for me to bear any burden.

Many books have been written and movies made about seeing or traveling into the future. It’s a concept that fascinates. What would I do if I knew what’s coming? What would I change?

Of course, the Lord knows what lies ahead for all of us, and He has instructed His prophets throughout time. The prophet Alma asked some of his people, “Do you look forward with an eye of faith, and view this mortal body raised in immortality, and this corruption raised in incorruption, to stand before God to be judged according to the deeds which have been done in the mortal body?” (Alma 5:15).