Charity Bringeth Unto Me

In the most recent general conference, Elder John D. Amos spoke about cooking Louisiana dishes, and he said this about what he does if he finds something is lacking after taste testing it: “At that point, I can hear the Creole cooking legends whispering in my ears, ‘Put more Tony’s in it.’ Tony’s is a Creole seasoning made in Opelousas, Louisiana, my hometown. It is often used as the ‘secret ingredient’ to compensate for the imperfections made while following the recipe.” I have a vague recollection of a missionary on my mission similarly raving about Tony’s. He swore by it to enhance our amateur missionary cooking, though I don’t recall ever really forming an opinion about it. But, since it was recommended in general conference, I guess it must be good! Elder Amos suggested that there is similarly a spiritual “secret ingredient” that we need more of in the midst of our failings and shortcomings. He taught, “The simple secret for happy living is to just follow God’s recipe as detailed in the scriptures. I call it the ‘Good News Recipe.’ What do you do if something goes wrong when following the recipe? Well, embedded in the Good News Recipe is the ‘secret ingredient’ to ensure you always get it right in the end. The answer is always Jesus Christ.” He continued, “I think we all have moments when we feel our ingredients are not good enough, or we struggle to follow the directions, or perhaps we do something out of order, or something happens that is out of our control, and so on. What’s the remedy? It’s simply to add more of what invites Jesus Christ into your life.” That is clearly what Nephi sought to do in his family and among his people: “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins” (2 Nephi 25:26). Even though they were living the law of Moses with all of its prescriptions and procedures, they put their focus on Jesus Christ and His power to offer a remission of sins. Moroni invited us in these words to seek after Jesus Christ in our lives after telling us that he had seen Him “face to face”: “And now, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written, that the grace of God the Father, and also the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of them, may be and abide in you forever” (Ether 12:41).   

               So, these invitations beg the question, “How do we seek this Jesus and add more of Him in our life?” Elder Amos sought to answer that question with a story about a missionary who was struggling to love a difficult companion. The answer they found was to seek to do “small and simple things” to follow this invitation from the scriptures: “And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (Moroni 7:45). The missionary found that as he sought to show in small ways this kind of charity—the pure love of Christ—towards his companion, everything changed for the better. If “God is love” as John declared, then surely seeking to be filled with love will bring us nearer to Him and bring more of Him into our lives (1 John 4:16). John also wrote, “For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another…. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren…. And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him” (1 John 3:11, 16, 23-24). Ultimately, I think we can say that whatever situation we are dealing with, the secret ingredient that we need to add more of is love, the kind of love that Jesus Christ gave. If we don’t know how to add Him then we can add love, and we will eventually find the truth of His promise: “Charity bringeth unto me—the fountain of all righteousness” (Ether 12:28).