April 2, 2005

Six years ago, today, was the 175th semi-annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was also the same day of the passing of Pope John Paul II.

The very next morning, during the Sunday session of General Conference, President Gordon B. Hinckley focused his remarks on the divine calling of Joseph Smith as the Prophet of the Restoration.  It was within his talk that President Hinckley named several of the "great things which God revealed through Joseph the Prophet."

Those subsequent days I followed with great interest as the next Pope was chosen.  I remember asking my husband during the process if he thought the Lord would guide the decision of these men who met together for them to be able to pick a good man to lead the Catholic Church.

"No," he answered.  "For it is not God's Church. They are left to themselves to decide."

His answer, along with the penetrating testimony of President Hinckley on that General Conference Sunday, added to my everlasting conviction that God has a true and living Church which He restored through Joseph Smith and continues to reveal to our living prophet today, President Thomas S. Monson.

Two Great Ends

Yesterday, during the baptism, we watched the video “The Restoration.”

I love the story of The First Vision.

I love it because it invokes in me tender feelings of when I first knew – KNEW WITHOUT A DOUBT – that Joseph Smith was called as a prophet of God.

The prophet of the Restoration.

The First Prophet of this - the Last and Final – Dispensation.

There was one part in the video that caught a corner of my heart and it tugged on it for a long, long while.

Because I found myself thinking about the role of righteous women.

Righteous women? During the Joseph Smith video?

I know! That’s why I say it caught my heart because it wasn’t related directly . . . although it was, I think.

In the movie, after Joseph's magnificent Vision, the camera shows him leaving, quite contemplatively, that Sacred Grove of trees.

As he slowly turns away, he begins his walk from out of the tree. Slowly at first, and then gradually he is seen running towards home.

And while in his running towards home he calls, “Mother!”

Of all the people he could have told about what he saw that morning in the grove of trees, he went home to tell his Mother!

Lucy Mack Smith – this woman of a boy prophet - found herself on the boundary of two great ends: the End of the Great Apostasy and at the Beginning of the Restoration of the Fullness of Times.

And as the Restored Gospel began to unfold - literally within the walls of her own home - she left one Great End and adhered herself to a greater Beginning.

And the question I ask myself, as one corner of my heart is being tugged, is when I find myself of the boundary of two great ends, will I be strong and brave and faithful enough to adhere to the one that leads me to a greater beginning?