Love in the Gathering

Well, it's great to be here.
We love to be on college campuses like Ensign College. You've got quite a campus here that spreads all the way to this building. So, I'm very impressed with you and your campus. But Kalleen and I have spent most of our adult lives either as college students or working among them. Sitting in rooms like this one over the decades, interacting with your wrinkle-free young single adult and young married adult faces has given us the illusion that we fit right in. Our lives have been shaped in rooms like this one. So let me begin by saying from experience, that rooms like this one are great places to launch great lives.

And so, after a long career of worshiping with young single adults, imagine our surprise when President Russell M. Nelson called me to be—oh, happy birthday! President Nelson called me to be president of the Young Men. I was just getting comfortable talking to young single adults when I was called to translate my testimony from college speak into Deacon speak. And it turned out that talking to 11-year-olds has been a little bit better fit for me. So I'll try to translate back again, but probably not to much effect.

Since President Nelson placed his hands on my head and made me actually a young man five years ago, you and I have sort of passed through many of your teenage years together as contemporaries.

Every calling comes with an expiration date, and ours was to be August 1st of this year. We wondered just before that if that night at midnight we would turn into pumpkins. But life has gone on, and a few days later I got a call—or a text actually—from my ward deacons quorum president, asking if I could help him with our ward assignment to provide the sacrament to an assisted care center nearby.

And so it came to pass that literally one day I was a General Officer with a leadership connection to every Aaronic Priesthood holder in the world, and then the next I was being bossed around by maybe the youngest deacons quorum president in the Church.

And it turned out that I actually needed the supervision! Several times as we went about our service that morning, he put a hand on my arm and quietly corrected something that I had overlooked.

It confirmed what I had long suspected and feared: I do wholesale. Deacons do retail. This deacon knew how to serve, and I've become his eager disciple. How I love the holders of the Aaronic Priesthood, who wield the priesthood with decided power and authority.

Before a sacrament meeting at that old folks’ home, the branch president told us that his branch was of an age that there are funerals there about every week. He said, “Today there will almost surely be people who will receive at your hand the sacrament of the Lord's supper for the last time in mortality.” And in fact, there were three funerals announced that very morning.

Sometimes, and we rarely know when, our ministrations to each other turn out to be benedictory to the lives of those we touch, and eventually even benedictory to our own lives. Our Father’s family is connected. We are in this together.

Many of you have been deacons and teachers and priests. Thank you for often doing things that have been hard for you to do.

Many of you have served missions. Many more of you will yet serve missions or serve in myriad other ways. You have and will do hard things in service to Heavenly Father’s family here and around this world. So, thank you, each of you, for your consecrations. They matter, and they have mattered in ways that you usually don't get to see—at least not on this side of mortality.

“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13:34,35)

That Godly commandment has rained down upon everyone who has ever lived from that moment He declared it in the upper room to His disciples, apostles, through the dark ages, through the other ages, till today. Blessings of better life have fallen to everyone who has followed Him by protecting and nurturing others.

But this admonition has extra weight for we of this rising generation. Think about how the Lord’s command to us specifically to ‘love one another’ has been amplified through President Russell M. Nelson. And remember—it’s not like he’s been thinking about this for 100 years. It’s actually been 101 years he’s been thinking about this.

In his first worldwide event upon becoming the Prophet, he spoke specifically to you from this Conference Center, to you personally. He said:

“My dear extraordinary youth, you were sent to earth at this precise time—the most crucial time in the history of the world—to help gather Israel.”
There is nothing happening on this earth right now that is more important than that. There is nothing of greater consequence—absolutely nothing. “This gathering should mean everything to you. And this is the mission for which you were sent to the earth to accomplish.” (RMN, Hope of Israel, 2018)

Now, I hope I'm not being too simplistic by pointing out the connection between the Savior's command to “love one another” and President Nelson's invitation to engage in the gathering. The gathering is simply about loving the people of the world enough to invite them to higher ground. Our focus is on all of our Heavenly Father’s family—including your family. Including, dare I say, your roommates.

And it must be said on a day like today, especially, including those who think differently than you may.
It may seem challenging to “hate the sin… and at the same time love the sinner.” But if that feels like a call to stand on a razor's edge of discipleship, the gospel promises that in following Him, you will find secure footing in that place. And if it places you for a time on uncomfortable ground, you need simply look around, and you'll find that you are not alone.

“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven...” Matt 4:44, 45

So being long-suffering and patient and forgiving will place you in conjunction with a multitude of disciples, mingling with God and angels.

President Nelson also taught that, “you are among the best that the Lord has ever sent into this world.” He said:
“You have the capacity to be smarter and wiser and have more impact on the world than any previous generation!” RMN, Hope of Israel, 2018.

That is saying a lot. That should make your stomachs hurt just for a second.

I'm not sure I know everything President Nelson intended to say about your capacity to rise above the attainments of other generations, but I expect that some of that capacity will be enabled and unleashed by what you are doing at Ensign College. The promise is that here, and in places like this, you can learn the disciplines of prosperity while practicing something of the lifestyle of discipleship.

Combining wisdom and competency with personal ministry is a recipe for making good on your capacities toward being smarter, wiser, and more impactful than you now are.

In places like Ensign College, we learn that we cannot allow our spirituality to be shoved into a corner as a bystander to our worldview. Our spirituality must be front and center to help us evaluate our learnings and to navigate our choices.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife Kalleen and I got a new calling. We are now Primary music leaders in our ward. She is a natural. I am a deer in the headlights. But it is a joy.

My advice to all who find themselves occasionally in need of increased spiritual strength is: just go stand outside the Primary in the hall and listen. Or maybe get permission to sit on the back row for a while. It may be impossible to not feel the Spirit in Primary.

The sacrament ordinance is a sacred instrumentality to strengthen our spirituality and therefore to live up to our divine purposes—to become more and to do more. To become something more of the “greatest generation” President Nelson knows that you can become.

So, my new favorite Sacrament hymn isn’t a sacrament hymn at all—but it could be. It’s called To Think About Jesus.

I wonder if they sang this when you were in Primary. This is a relatively new song, but you probably know it. So, just kind of let these musical lyrics run through your mind:

It shouldn’t be hard to sit very still and to think about Jesus, His cross on the hill, and all that He suffered and did for me; it shouldn’t be hard to sit quietly. It shouldn’t be hard, even though I am small, to think about Jesus, not hard at all.

I think of the miles He walked in the dust, and the children He helped to love and to trust; it shouldn’t be hard to sit tall in my seat, to listen politely and quiet my feet. It shouldn’t be hard, even though I am small, to think about Jesus, not hard at all. (To Think About Jesus, Childrens Songbook p 71)

My friend, Craig Ballard, has served with us on our Young Men advisory board. He grew up in President Nelson’s ward and so had frequent interaction with him and has a relationship with him. Craig had noticed that during the sacrament service, then-Elder Nelson would be deep in thought while he sat on the stand. Always curious, one day while walking down the hall to Sunday School class with him, Craig asked Elder Nelson, “Could I ask, what is it that you think about while you’re there in the sacrament service? What do you think about during the sacrament?”

He said something like this: “Well, during the sacrament, I try to picture in my mind what the Savior looked like during His ministry. I try to picture what He must have been doing, and how He acted, and how He responded to others. And then I consider how I might be more like that.”

So—close your eyes for a moment during your next sacrament service. What will you see Jesus doing?

I've tried to follow President Nelson’s example to improve my sacrament experience.

I see the Savior in my mind in the mortal world—making promises, advocating for His Father.

I see Him looking into people’s eyes as He taught and ministered and passed among them along their way.
Lately, artists seem to be painting Him more and more smiling—more than we’ve seen in the past. And this is probably good. But as I contemplate Him, I think His face in repose was probably more often in deep concentration, with a bearing of taking interest in what’s around Him and perhaps a bearing of personal concern.

I see Him standing in a flowing river, with cool water enveloping Him, gasping for breath as He came out and looked at John—and in a glance acknowledged the ancient prophecies and promises being fulfilled.

The mortal Jesus was still, at His core, the Creator of the Universe. It had been at His command and influence that the galaxies were put into spin. He had the faith to move mountains. But in His mortal ministry, the object of His miracles was seldom physical displays of power. He didn’t move mountains, but people. He did not divide the sea, but He divided fish and bread to feed the hungry. He didn’t often offer up to the world dramatic displays of power. Instead, He displayed the world to the blind.
He did not come to change the world. He came to change us. His miracles were always about us. Always about people, not things.

President Bonnie Cordon and I were once witnesses to what I can only interpret to have been a revelation. Maybe you can imagine what it would be like to be with a prophet and witness the receiving of revelation.

President Cordon and I have done this. We’d been asked to make a presentation to the First Presidency about the FSY program—these youth conferences going on around the world. It was just President Cordon and I and Elder Uchtdorf, our apostolic leader in that effort, and the First Presidency: President Nelson, President Oaks, President Eyring, and then Elder Brook Hales, the secretary to the First Presidency. Just a small little group of us in the room.

We presented a PowerPoint presentation with statistics and photos and music and explanations of how it was going. Elder Eyring then asked a question about the substance of our report. Then Elder Oaks asked a couple of questions. But all this while, President Nelson just sat quietly, leaning forward in his chair, as he often does—paying deep attention to every word and every comment. When his counselors spoke, he would turn his head, making eye contact with them, giving them his full attention and making sure that he was capturing what they were saying. But then—he had no questions for us. As the questions from his counselors subsided, Elder Uchtdorf sensed that our mission was accomplished and began to gather his papers and to stand, thanking them for our time together. And so Bonnie and I slid our chairs back a little bit as well and began to stand.

When President Nelson said, clearly and with measured earnestness: “You must teach them to pray.”

Well, we quickly sat back down. Clearly, this meeting was not over. Now, I’m paraphrasing, but he said something very much like this as he continued:

“You must teach them. You must teach them to pray. To whom it is they pray. And the language of prayer. I fear that we have become far too casual in the way that we approach the throne of God. If we could see the majesty of who it is that we’re speaking to on the other side of the veil when we say, ‘Our Father in Heaven’….If we could see the glory of His presence, we would bring the most elevated speech that we could muster. We would be much more humble...”.

And then, after a pause, he repeated:
“You must teach them to pray. To whom it is they pray. And the language of prayer.”

We discerned that as we made our presentation, President Nelson wasn’t just thinking about FSY conferences. He was pondering their purposes. His vision wasn’t restricted to a program; he was contemplating the needs of a generation—your needs and mine. FSY is important because it’s a platform for teaching Heavenly Father’s children who He is and how to converse with Him.

President Nelson’s call for us to take each other seriously, to take the gathering seriously, and to take our purposes in this life seriously are all captured in the Aaronic Priesthood quorum theme. It begins with the words, “I am a beloved son of God, and He has a work for me to do.”
The Young Women say essentially the same thing—more poetically, of course: “I am a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents, with a divine nature and an eternal destiny...”.

We’ve been given many tools to help us discover our true nature and the work the Savior has sent us to do.
So, let’s serve each other more deliberately. Let’s take the sacrament more purposefully. Let’s pray with more intensity and frequency to help inform our life’s direction and to fuel our eternal trajectory.

This is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.