18. None Other Object

A bishopric message published in the November 1997 issue of the Bountiful Twentieth Ward Newsette.

Near the end of his life, after blessing his sons, Father Lehi said, “I have none other object save it be the everlasting welfare of your souls” (2 Nephi 2:30). What a marvelous sermon in only fourteen words!

As your bishopric, we echo that same sentiment: We have none other object save it be the everlasting welfare of your souls.

Would that that would be the desire of every home teacher and visiting teacher in our ward. Just think how we might treat the individuals we are assigned to visit if we had none other object than the everlasting welfare of their souls. Just think of the lessons we might teach them. The service we might render. The love and compassion and tenderness we might show.

Is not our Heavenly Father’s and our Savior’s objective the same? “This is my work and my glory,” the Lord declared, “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:37). Everything They do in our behalf is to help us return home, if we desire it enough, to enjoy immortality and eternal life with Them. Clearly, They have none other object than the everlasting welfare of our souls.

Should not each of us—regardless of where we serve, whether as a teacher or a quorum president, as a pianist or an adviser, as a member of an auxiliary presidency or a secretary—desire the same for the people we are called to serve? Is not that what it means to have “an eye single to the glory of God” (D&C 4:5), as we seek to do the same work the Savior does?

May the Lord bless us so to do.