Joseph B. Wirthlin, “The Abundant Life,” Ensign, May 2006, 99–102

Part THREE.

...The second quality of those who live abundant lives is that they fill their hearts with love.

Love is the essence of the gospel and the greatest of all the commandments. The Savior taught that every other commandment and prophetic teaching hangs upon it. The Apostle Paul wrote that “all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

We often don’t know the reach of a simple act of kindness. The Prophet Joseph Smith was a model of compassion and love. One day, a group of eight African Americans arrived at the Prophet’s home in Nauvoo. They had traveled from their home in Buffalo, New York, some 800 miles away, so they could be with the prophet of God and with the Saints. Although they were free, they were forced to hide from those who might mistake them for runaway slaves. They endured cold and hardship, wearing out shoes and then socks until they walked on bare feet all the way to the City of Joseph. When they arrived in Nauvoo, the Prophet welcomed them into his home and helped each of them find a place to stay.

But there was one, a girl named Jane, who did not have a place to go, and she wept, not knowing what to do.

“We won’t have tears here,” Joseph said to her. He turned to Emma and said, “Here’s a girl who says she [doesn’t have a] home. Don’t you think she has a home here?”

Emma agreed. From that day on, Jane lived as a member of the family.

Years after the Prophet’s Martyrdom and after she had joined the pioneers and made the long trek to Utah, Jane said that sometimes she would still “wake up in the middle of the night, and just think about Brother Joseph and Sister Emma and how good they [were] to me. Joseph Smith,” she said, “was the finest man I ever saw on Earth.”

President Gordon B. Hinckley has said that those who reach out to lift and serve others “will come to know a happiness … never known before. … Heaven knows there are so very, very, very many people in this world who need help. Oh, so very … many. Let’s get the cankering, selfish attitude out of our lives, my brothers and sisters, and stand a little taller and reach a little higher in the service of others.”

We are all busy. It’s easy to find excuses for not reaching out to others, but I imagine they will sound as hollow to our Heavenly Father as the elementary school boy who gave his teacher a note asking that he be excused from school March 30th through the 34th.

Those who devote their lives in pursuit of their own selfish desires at the exclusion of others will discover that, in the end, their joy is shallow and their lives have little meaning.

On a tombstone of one such person was carved the following epitaph:

Here lies a miser who lived for himself,
And cared for nothing but gathering pelf,
Now, where he is, or how he fares,
Nobody knows and nobody cares.

We are happiest when our lives are connected to others through unselfish love and service. President J. Reuben Clark taught that “there is no greater blessing, no greater joy and happiness than comes to us from relieving the distress of others.”