He Went About Doing Good

To my son, 

               When you were baptized, and when you partake of the Sacrament each week, you made three promises to God: to always remember the Savior, to take upon you His name, and to keep His commandments. I want to write to you a little today about taking upon us His name. I believe that part of this means that we are to try to live as He would have us live; we are to try to be good examples to others of the things that He would do and treat others as He would treat them if He were here. To do that, then, we must know the kinds of things that He did while He was on the earth so we can emulate Him. At the start of His ministry, after His baptism and fasting in the wilderness, Matthew recorded this: “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people…. And they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them” (Matthew 4:23-24). This is a great summary of what He spent most of His ministry doing: teaching the people and healing all those who were afflicted in any way. He lifted everyone around Him spiritually and physically, preaching the gospel and blessing those with diseases, devils, and sicknesses so they could be cured. He gave of His time to help and heal others, and that is exactly what we should do as well.

               There are a lot of stories in the four gospels about people He healed. One of them reads this way: “And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Matthew 8:2-3). This was a significant thing because those with leprosy were considered totally unclean and the Jews normally would stay far away from them and would not touch them for fear of becoming themselves unclean. But Jesus was not concerned about that, and He was willing to touch and heal this man with leprosy. Another story that I love is that of a blind man named Bartimæus: “And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimæus, the son of Timæus, sat by the highway side begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way” (Mark 10:46-52). What stands out to me in this story is that the people tried to silence the blind man; they were embarrassed by him. But Jesus loved him and reached out to him to heal and help him. Often in our lives we will come across those who are marginalized like this by society, and we should remember this story when that happens and go to help them no matter what others think. We may not be able to heal everyone like He did, but we can help and bless and love others like He did, and I can think of no better way that we can take upon ourselves His name.

               I know that you have a great power to bless and help others, even at your young age. Never forget that you have promised to take upon you the name of Jesus Christ and to strive to live as He would live. Of course we can’t do that perfectly, but we can try harder each day to love others as He did and reach out to those who are down. Perhaps Peter summed up the life of the Savior best when he said simply, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). We should strive to live so that this is an accurate description of our lives too. You indeed have the potential to do much good in your life as you strive to follow the Savior.

Love,

Dad