Post by Heloram –
As my father taught our people from the tower, he was very conscientious not to appear boastful or condemning. He so loves our people. His love and care for our people has been evident his whole life. He really has labored his whole life for our people. He worked personally to provide for our family rather than burden our people with taxes for his support. His genuine purpose is to make it clear that he feels his service to our people is actually only service to God.
We have heard this in our home many times. In father’s modesty and in very sincerity he deflects all praise of his selflessness, to his desire and our mutual responsibility to one another as being “service to God.” So this comment which has now become almost our theme, was not new to my family or those who know our family.
“Behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”
It is one thing to preach something with words from a pulpit, it is another to say something from a pulpit but preach it with the way you have lived your whole life. Permit me to quote some of my father’s speech directly.
“Behold, ye have called me your king; and if I, whom ye call your king, do labor to serve you, then ought not ye to labor to serve one another?
And behold also, if I, whom ye call your king, who has spent his days in your service, and yet has been in the service of God, do merit any thanks from you, O how you ought to thank your heavenly King!
I say unto you, my brethren, that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole soul has power to possess, to that God who has created you, and has kept and preserved you, and has caused that ye should rejoice, and has granted that ye should live in peace one with another—
I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.
And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you.
And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him.
And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?
And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you.”
I guess you can tell, my father is not much for boasting of our own strength. Having fought against the Lamanites with his own hand and having spent his life to help our people overcome our pride which was the cause of much contentions, his claim that we are not even as the dust of the earth is a pretty direct call for continued humility, recognizing our dependence on our Heavenly King.
Well, that’s my father.
(Book of Mormon | Mosiah 2:14 – 25)
