“If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?”

¹⁸ And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

¹⁹ And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

²⁰ And they straightway (εὐθέως) left their nets, and followed him.

²¹ And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.

²² And they immediately (εὐθέως) left the ship and their father, and followed him.  (Matthew 4:18-22, emphasis mine)

We Latter-day Saints venerate the early Christian apostles and disciples for their instant willingness to obey the Lord.  We stand in awe of those who suffered martyrdom for their faith.  We celebrate nineteenth-century members of the Church who, called to leave their families and preach the gospel in far distant places, dropped what they were doing and set out on their journeys.  We honor our pioneer forebears, who abandoned their homes in England and Scotland and Switzerland and Denmark and elsewhere and, at the behest of Church leaders, emigrated to the arid Great Basin and then, in many cases, abandoned their new homes there at the request of the Church to colonize San Bernardino and Arizona and St. George and southern Alberta and northern Mexico.  We reenact the treks of the handcart pioneers — remembering especially the tragedies of the Willy and Martin companies — reminding ourselves and our children of their heroic faithfulness, hoping that we too will manifest such devoted commitment in our own lives and circumstances.  Many of us have taken upon ourselves solemn covenants of obedience, sacrifice, and consecration.

Recently, Church leaders have asked us, for the next little while, to wear little pieces of cloth over our mouths and noses when we’re out in public among crowds.

5 Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper.

² And the Syrians had gone out by companies, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid; and she waited on Naaman’s wife.

³ And she said unto her mistress, Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy.

⁴ And one went in, and told his lord, saying, Thus and thus said the maid that is of the land of Israel.

⁵ And the king of Syria said, Go to, go, and I will send a letter unto the king of Israel. And he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment.

⁶ And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, Now when this letter is come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy.

⁷ And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me.

⁸ And it was so, when Elisha the man of God had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.

⁹ So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.

¹⁰ And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.

¹¹ But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.

¹² Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.

¹³ And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?

¹⁴ Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.  (2 Kings 5:1-14)

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I worry about the contentiousness and the potential factionalism in the Facebook post displayed above and so very painfully manifest in contemporary American politics.

1 Now behold, I will show unto you that they did not establish a king over the land; but in this same year, yea, the thirtieth year, they did destroy upon the judgment-seat, yea, did murder the chief judge of the land.

2 And the people were divided one against another; and they did separate one from another into tribes, every man according to his family and his kindred and friends; and thus they did destroy the government of the land.

3 And every tribe did appoint a chief or a leader over them; and thus they became tribes and leaders of tribes.

4 Now behold, there was no man among them save he had much family and many kindreds and friends; therefore their tribes became exceedingly great.

5 Now all this was done, and there were no wars as yet among them; and all this iniquity had come upon the people because they did yield themselves unto the power of Satan.  (3 Nephi 7:1-5)

13 And the anger of the Lord is kindled, and his sword is bathed in heaven, and it shall fall upon the inhabitants of the earth.

14 And the arm of the Lord shall be revealed; and the day cometh that they who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants, neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people;

15 For they have strayed from mine ordinances, and have broken mine everlasting covenant;

16 They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall. . . .

38 What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.  (Doctrine and Covenants 1:13-16)

I close with a quotation from the heroic English Protestant clergyman William Law (1686-1761) that was a favorite of the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell:

“If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”