Elder Shayne M. Bowen
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The Idaho Falls Temple and nearby Freeman Park are both built on sanitary landfills, which are places "where garbage is buried and reclaimed."
To reclaim means to "recall from wrong and improper conduct, to rescue from an undesirable state." Can a life be reclaimed that "through reckless abandon has become so strewn with garbage that it appears that the person is unforgivable?"
The scriptures teach about the Atonement of Christ, which is available to every person. The prophet Alma wrote that Christ will "take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people' and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities."
The Atonement is infinite. It can "clean, reclaim and sanctify; even you. That is what infinite means. Total, complete, all, forever."
Like the landfill, which "requires dedicated work and attention, laboriously applying layer after layer of fill to reclaim the low lying ground, our lives also require the same vigilance, continually applying layer after layer of the healing gift of repentance."
