Gathered Unto Me

This week’s Come, Follow Me lesson tells of how the Saints were commanded to gather to Ohio in the end of 1830. It was a significant sacrifice for them to leave their homes and go to the frontier, and I was impressed by the letter included from Phebe Carter (who eventually married Wilford Woodruff) when she chose to leave her family as a young woman to gather with the Saints. She left this message for her parents: “Beloved Parents—I am now about to leave my paternal roof for a while … I know not how long—but not without grateful feelings for the kindness which I have received from my infancy until the present time—but Providence seems to order it otherwise now than it has been…. Mother, I believe it is the will of God for me to go to the west and I have been convinced that it has been for a long time. Now the way has opened … ; I believe that it is the spirit of the Lord that has done it which is sufficient for all things. O be not anxious for your child; the Lord will comfort me. I believe that the Lord will take care of me and give me that which is for the best.… I go because my Master calls—he has made my duty plain.” That call from the Master would take her not just to Ohio but also with the Saints to Missouri, Nauvoo, and ultimately all the way to Utah where she would remain until her death many years later. Like so many other Saints, she made great sacrifices to leave her former life behind and follow a prophet of God, never going back. But the blessings were also great as they built houses of the Lord to be “endowed with power from on high” and received “a blessing so great as [they] never [had] known” (Doctrine and Covenants 38:32, 39:10).

Not everyone who believed in the message of the Restoration, though, was willing to gather with the Saints. James Covel, unlike Phebe, was one who accepted the message briefly but then rejected the Lord’s call to move to Ohio. An article describing his decision says this: “On January 5, 1831, a revelation came through Joseph Smith, calling Covel to join the Saints in their move to Ohio. ‘Thou art called to Labour in my Vineyard & to build up my Church,’ the revelation said…. Covel must have known that moving west would mean cutting ties with the deep and extensive associations he had built up over his career. Two of his sons were Methodist preachers, and his years spent working in New York City had put him in contact with the movement’s most powerful voices. All the prestige he had accumulated over the course of a lifetime would have to be abandoned. It took Covel less than 48 hours to decide that he would not move to Ohio. A follow-up revelation made clear that Covel had rejected the Lord’s call: Covel, it said, ‘Received the word with Gladness but Straitway Satan came & tempted him & the fear of persecution & the cares of the world caused him to reject the word.’” He was not willing to sacrifice his worldly position for the kingdom of God. His story and the example of Phebe and other early Saints invite us to ask ourselves: are we willing to go where the Master calls us to go? We of course are no longer commanded to change our residence to gather with the Saints, but we are invited to change ourselves to follow the Lord. Ultimately we have to determine if the “pride and the cares of the world” will prevent us from truly accepting the Savior’s path in life or if we can “lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better” (Doctrine and Covenants 25:10, 39:9). Ultimately the gathering that really matters for all of us is our gathering to the Lord now and in the world to come by making and keeping covenants with Him. His promise to James Covel is surely meant for all of us: “He that receiveth these things receiveth me; and they shall be gathered unto me in time and in eternity” (Doctrine and Covenants 39:22).