Chapter 43: Listen and Love

Elder Jonas Childers
Jul 12, 2021
2 min read

"Love ye therefore the stranger"

Deuteronomy 10:19

What a great week. The highlights definitely were being able to do two exchanges and have Zone Conference and interviews with President McCrudden! Needless to say, I learned a lot this week, especially from my new mission president and his wife whom I am coming to love more and more each day.

This week, in alignment with what President McCrudden taught me in my interview, I just felt again the critical importance of being able to listen to and love others. I feel that each day I was being tutored by the people and experiences around me, but also by the spirit on just the central simplicity that love plays in our purpose here in life: we simply are here to love other people the best we can. Everything else, all of "the law" so to say, hangs on, or falls under, our responsibility to simply love others (Matthew 22:36-40).

This, obviously, is a pretty broad concept, and one that most people agree on. Of course we are supposed to love each other, but what does that even look like it and why is such a concept becoming more and more foreign to a world ever-distanced from God and each other?

Truth, as always, can be found by looking to the all-encompassing example of the Saviour, Jesus Christ. He is to us all the perfect model of perfect love. So, whom did he love?

He loved the rejected.

He loved the outcasts.

He loved the guilty.

He loved the mentally-ill.

He loved the elderly.

He loved the poor.

He loved the women.

He loved the men.

He loved the children.

He loved the imperfect.

In essence, he loved all people. He spent his time with those deemed by society to be unworthy. Who do we deem to be unworthy? Personally? Within the church? And yet, ironically, Christ invites all to come unto him.

And, how did Jesus love?

He served.

He prayed.

He showed compassion.

He turned the other cheek.

He begged on other's behalf.

He had mercy.

He taught and tutored.

He delicately lifted.

He inspired.

He led.

He chastened with authority.

He meekly accepted.

He sacrificed.

In addition to all of these things, he listened. Jesus helped others feel understood: by listening and responding with compassion and love, he tore down internals walls of self-loathing, insecurity, and fear brick by brick. He then helped people rebuild their lives to eventually prepare them to return to mansions of his father, a place he promised to show each of us he'd the way to (John 14:1-6).

We have the opportunity to do the same. Please listen to others, really listen, and I promise that God will pour out his spirit to help you understand how to help, help that each of us need.

Life is good.

God is wise.

Don't give up.