What Seek Ye?

When John the Baptist saw Jesus on one occasion while he (John) was with two of his disciples, he looked on Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God!”  The disciples, one of whom was Andrew, “heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.”  When Jesus saw them He asked this question that likewise comes down to us through the ages: “What seek ye?”  Their answer to the Savior was simple and yet profound, “Where dwellest thou?” (John 1:35-38)  What should we be seeking most earnestly in our lives?  To live with Him again and to be where He is.  Our greatest goal is to be able to dwell where He dwells in the kingdom of the Father.  As I think about that crucial question and answer, I’m led to ponder what is certainly one of the greatest verses in the Book of Mormon: Moroni 7:48. 

                Mormon finished his words to the “peaceable followers of Christ” with this invitation—which at its core is really the same message as the above mentioned conversation with the Savior—“ Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure.”  The goal of this life is that we may someday become even as the Savior is so that when our time comes to go before Him we may find that we have been sufficiently purified like Him in order to enter into His presence.  In other words, we want to live in such a way that we can dwell where He dwells after this life.  What Mormon’s words give us is the key to doing that.  What we need more than anything to “be like him” when He appears to us is to be “filled with this love.”  This is the pure love of Christ—meaning both that we love Christ and that Christ’s love is in us.  It means that we have internalized the two great commandments, that we “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” and that we “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matt. 22:37, 39).  It means that we have become our brother’s keeper, that we love one another as Jesus loved us, that we “cleave unto charity” more than our earthly possessions (John 13:34, Moroni 7:46).

                What amazes me about Mormon’s powerful invitation to seek for charity is the context in which it was written.  He was living amidst the most wicked people ever to have been in the house of Israel who had absolutely no love left in them, and yet Mormon found it in himself to seek for love in his life (Mormon 4:12).  He told us, “I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love” (Moroni 8:17).  Of the wicked Nephites who had rejected Christ he said, “Behold, I had led them, notwithstanding their wickedness I had led them many times to battle, and had loved them, according to the love of God which was in me, with all my heart; and my soul had been poured out in prayer unto my God all the day long for them” (Mormon 3:12).  If he through the grace of God in prayer found in him to love even these in their depravity, then that makes his invitation to pray with everything we have for love even more powerful.  Seeking to be filled with this love is what our answer to the Savior’s question should be, and filling our hearts with that love is the quest of a lifetime.