Joseph Smith's Most Important Revelation; Our Most Important Calling.

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I remember telling Joseph Smith’s account of the First Vision to the people I taught in Sydney, Australia as a young missionary back in the early 1980s. My companions and I memorized his account and told it over and over again. I felt the Spirt bare witness of the truth of it more times than I can count.

My three-sentence summary of that vision is this: Joseph Smith went alone into a grove of trees near his home in Palmyra, New York to pray. He was a 14-year-old boy concerned by his sins and unsure which spiritual path to follow. In response to that prayer God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him.

As I have gone back and reread all that Joseph Smith wrote about his First Vision, something new has stood out to me. More than once, Joseph wrote how the vision with God the Father and Jesus Christ made him feel. He wrote, “My soul was filled with love, and for many days, I could rejoice with great joy.” He later wrote, “it . . . filled me with joy unspeakable.”

I like to think the love of God, communicated to Joseph so profoundly is among the most important revelations he received during his lifetime. President Jeffery R. Holland said, “The first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength” (April Conference 2016, Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders among You). During the First Vision God made His love unmistakably clear. The feeling of it lingered for days.

What do we do with that love? We, in turn, love God back and we love one another. Jesus summarized all the commandments into two simple statements. He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord they God, with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all their mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two Commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40).

We are to love everyone (The parable of the good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37). No one has to earn our love (the parable of the prodigal son, Luke 15:11-32). No one can act in a way that excuses us from loving them (the Sermon of the Mount, Matthew 5:43-47). As we love everyone, including those who despitefully use us, it changes us. We become more like Christ, who, hanging from the cross, forgave those who put him there. We are commanded to forgive everyone (D&C 64:9-10).

It’s not easy to love everyone. We can’t expect to have perfect love during this lifetime. But we can strive for it. Love is the most defining characteristic of Jesus. As we follow Him, it is the most important characteristic for us to develop.

Ultimately, in His Church, we all have the same calling. It is the calling to love one another. We were called upon our baptism—and made a covenant then—to bear one another’s burdens. To mourn with those that mourn and comfort those stand in need of comfort (Mosiah 18:8-13). And to “Sucker the week, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.” (D&C 81:5)

Kathy and I are at the mission leaders’ seminar at the MTC in Provo with 147 other new mission leader couples gathered from around the world and preparing to go back out to the four corners of the earth. Among the themes we are hearing over and over again it is to love our missionaries. We haven’t met any of our missionaries yet. But we already love them.