Closing Remarks

I’m sure you caught that promise: “The Savior’s peace, joy, and divine love.” And may that be yours. And may you act in a way that will bring that to you—bring those blessings to you in a bountiful way.

I had lunch with President Oaks on Friday, and we were talking about this gathering. And I said—you know, I knew the message, the promise that he was going to give you—and I asked him what else he might say to you. And he said that he would like you to think about what kind of world you want to pass on to your children. What a question! I don’t know how many of you are thinking such things at the moment, but it’s a prophet-like question. And I pray that those things that we’re discussing tonight prepare you to prepare the world more effectively for the coming of your children, who he said will have a profound influence upon it.

As I thought about President Oaks’s promise to you, I thought of other prophets. And I thought of Alma the Younger, who had such a dramatic dawn to his faith. He was, of course, living a life of extraordinary degradation and vigorously opposing the Church, until one day that changed in one of the most profound transformations in scripture. And he said, amongst other things of that moment, “What joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was [meaning has been, had been] my pain.” It’s extraordinary to think of that. And to think of his transformation and then what he did and how he acted and whom he blessed.

He talked of those whose souls—this is later now—he talked of those whose souls did expand and “sing the song of redeeming love.” I love that phrase. “Sing the song of redeeming love.” And he wanted his people to understand that and to understand what they were missing if they were not singing the song of redeeming love. And so he tried and tried and tried and worked and worked and worked to help them understand that. He asked them questions that would lead them in the direction that would help them understand. He asked, “Have [you] spiritually been born of God?” Imagine being in that congregation. “Do you look forward with an eye of faith?” he asked. Wonderful to think about being there. And then, wonderfully, he asked, “If ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?” Wow. “Can ye feel so now?”

I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’ve wondered about being in one of those congregations, one of those groups, where he was asking these questions and teaching and yearning to help them understand what he had come to understand in his extraordinary transformation and his extraordinary conversion. I imagine him in a setting and looking out at a big group, I suppose. Some of the people he knew—and perhaps many of them he knew—and saying, “Can ye feel so now?” All sorts of images spring to mind. I have one of some young fellow putting up his hand and saying something like, “Well, Alma, I’m struggling to, because, you know, last night in the storm, my tent blew over.” That’s meant to be funny. It’s appalling. Yeah, his tent fell over.

So let’s go back to much more how it may well have been. A different congregation, a different day, Alma is asking that question, “Can ye feel so now?” And I think of another. I think of a young man, perhaps in his early 20s, I’ll call him Samuel, who did actually put up his hand in my imagined interaction. And he says to Alma, “I’m struggling. I fear my crop is going to fail.” Again, he says, “You know Rebecca. You know how I feel about Rebecca. But I’m just not sure how she feels about me.” And he has Alma’s attention. And then he says, “And the Lamanites are getting closer.”

So what as Alma thinks, looks at him with, I’m sure, great love and says to Samuel, “Well, these are real concerns, Samuel. And they weigh upon you. But Samuel, you know who you are. You know who you are. You know who your Savior is. You know that your loving Father in Heaven will send His Savior to redeem you. And you will be encircled in your Savior’s arms. Samuel, you know how this plays out.” And then with more force. “Samuel, this is faith. Samuel, this is faith.” And of course, in that congregation there are others who were absolutely “feeling so now.” But there were others like Samuel—probably many, I don’t know. “Samuel, this is faith. Samuel, please sing the song of redeeming love.” And with that, I see Alma beaming at him as if he wants to download this to Samuel, which I’m sure was his absolute intent. “Samuel, sing the song of redeeming love.”

Well, dear friends, this is something again that we can all practice. You all—the vast majority of you—know these foundational truths that Alma was teaching Samuel and the others. You know these truths. And you know more, because this is not hundreds of years before the Savior’s coming, this is hundreds of years, thousands of years, following the Savior’s coming. And we still have a living prophet, and you have a living prophet today who’s promising you the Savior’s peace, joy, and divine love, and you know where to find it. But it will take you to bring this—to bring the understanding of the truth—into your foreground. The foreground of your heart and the foreground of your mind. Pull it up close so that it is in front of those anxieties of the crop, the sweetheart who isn’t quite there yet, and the Lamanites approaching. But we have our faith up close, right in the foreground. Not as Samuel, clearly, had at that time with it in the background. Right up in front of us is where we need it. And we need to practice that. We need to practice that day in and day out—the way that you learned, many of you who served missions or many of you have had struggles to learn in other ways. But we need our faith in the foreground and, therefore, what will we do? Well, we are going to sing together a song of redeeming love.

The closing musical item today will be “Let Us All Press On” to the arrangement of the extraordinary Richard Elliott, who we’re blessed to have on the organ today, conducted by Marshall McDonald, wonderfully with this choir. But what we’re going to do is liken our singing before they sing at the end to coming to an understanding of these truths, to the journey, if you like, to singing the song of redeeming love, fully accepting that we’re not all there but we can stretch in that direction and all we need is our faith up close and in the foreground with everything else in the background. So what we’re going to do is first sing the first two lines of the hymn together. You with the choir. And as you do this, it’s fully acceptable for you just to be caught a bit off guard, to be distracted, if you like to be. In fact, we might encourage you to be a little slow like it is sometimes, just occasionally, when you go into a congregation and they aren’t quite with it.

I’ve never been in one myself. But can you do that? Just the first time, we’ll do it as maybe one of the worst ones you’ve experienced. And we’ll do that—just the first two lines. And the words will come up here now, I think. Any second now.

[The congregation and choir haltingly sing “Let us all Press On.”]

Desperate. This is one of my favorite hymns, and in many ways, it is a hymn, an anthem, of redeeming love. And yet, sometimes we actually sing it like that. I had to persuade, plead, with Richard Elliot to play it that way. He said, “Well, what will organists think around the world? Will they be concerned that I’m—” I said, “No, we’re pleading with you to do it like this. It’s not about the organist. It’s not about it being done badly. It’s about us getting transformed as we learn to sing with redeeming love. As we bring our faith up close and it’s immediately with us so it can eclipse everything else in brightness, in light.”

Okay, so just to give us a glimpse of how it can be, and we’ll have another crack at this in a second, we’re going to have the choir sing—what is it, two lines of the chorus? Thank you, Marshall.

[The choir exuberantly sings “Let us all press On.”]

How about that? Okay, that’s all we got to do. So again, remember. And in this, hymns have words, they have phrases, and we put the push, the power, and the light, and the energy into the words and phrases that count. And you punch them up. It doesn’t matter if you have an ugly singing voice but, for goodness sake, sing. And this again, is the parallel for you to put the emphasis where it needs to be in your testimony. Put the emphasis where it needs to be in the way that Alma meant it and in the way that President Oaks means it when he promises you peace, joy, and divine love from the Savior when you attend institute and when you attend—we’ll extend—sacrament meeting and everything else holy and beautiful. But we have to work and put the energy there.

I think what we’re going to do now is sing together the third verse and the chorus all together. Are you ready to do that? Okay, this time you need to kind of go for it.

[The congregation and choir sing “Let us all Press On.”]

So, so, so much better. So much better. But remember what we’re representing here. We’re actually going to have our faith in the foreground. And you’re actually going to emphasize the words that count. And I think we’ve highlighted a couple, but you can blast anything that speaks to you. All right? This is how we need to sing and how we plead with you to sing where the singing isn’t so strong, even if you’re the only one. But remember, this is representing your growing faith. And putting your faith with emphasis in the foreground despite your worries, your concerns, and fears, in the hope that you’ll eclipse them.

Okay, we’ll try this one last time together.

[The congregation and choir exuberantly sing “Let us all Press On.”]

How did that feel? Okay. It takes action, it takes vision, it takes selection to put the things we need to emphasize into our spiritual foreground that we might eclipse those fears, those anxieties, many of which are absolutely real. But I plead with you to practice this. Sacrament meeting is one invitation where you can practice to make it beautiful. Singing any time is another. But this is where and how we place emphasis, and this is how we bring our faith into the foreground and the way that Alma and President Dallin H. Oaks are inviting us to.

Dear friends, thank you for your goodness. May you be blessed as you seek to put the emphasis in your life where it belongs. Thank you for your goodness. I’m so grateful for this time with you. And I’m so grateful that I discovered my faith in my late 20s and I can be here with you today in this beautiful gathering where we speak of faith, of light, of joy, and specifically, the promise of the Savior’s peace, joy, and divine love. Of these things I testify with love and with gratitude and in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.