Growing up in a family of golfers, our summers revolved around the local and national junior golf schedules. Our annual family vacation found us heading, along with our cousins, to San Diego, California the second week of July for the Junior World Golf Tournament. There, my siblings and cousins would play at multiple different courses with varying tee times and the logistics of having everyone in the right place at the right time were complicated. I loved the whirl and enjoyed the trips but as a non golfer I never participated in the tournament so my parents tried to find opportunities for me. One year, my dad and I and two siblings left the course and headed to Los Angeles to watch the stage production of Les Miserables. I had read the book, I knew all the music and was particularly impressed as the characters played out the theme echoed in the line, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

On Thursday night, my twenty five year old son was visiting with my parents when a call came from an elderly neighbor who wasn’t feeling well and wanted a priesthood blessing. Together, my parents and my son went to the apartment of this dear friend. My mom sat near and held her hand as they all listened to her concerns and ailments. They called her family and Dad and my son laid their hands on her head to give her a blessing from her Heavenly Father. In a quiet moment, in a quiet room this woman reached out, my parents and son responded and all felt the love they had for each other and the love of God for all of them.

They learned again the truth, “…to serve in this Church is to stand in the river of God’s love for His children….[it is] a work party of people with picks and shovels trying to help clear the channel for the river of God’s love to reach His children at the end of the row…Help carry His love to His children, and some of it will splash on you.” (Elder Robert M. Daines, October 2021) Sometimes we serve, sometimes we are served, at different times we each play a variety roles in the “river of God’s love”.  Yet in His infinite wisdom, no matter where we stand, in the process we are all cleansed, refreshed and drenched in His love.