Spiritual thought for the week (March 17, 2007)

Brother Daniel Johnson is First Counselor in the Caribbean Area presidency, and a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy.  He spoke in the last General Conference.  Associating with the Johnsons has taught me a lot about what it means to consecrate your life to the service of the Lord.  By the time they finish their assignment here in the Caribbean, they will have spent nearly THIRTY YEARS traveling in Latin America, away from their family and their homeland.  Though they have lived in some lovely apartments, they have never really had a home of their own.  They do not even own their own furniture.  Their friends have largely been determined by their church callings.  They have had no chance to develop outside interests, or to get to know their own country.  Sister Johnson has wanted to visit Nauvoo for years, but has never had the chance.  When they’ve been “home”, their time is completely taken up with visiting family.  They don’t really know their own brothers and sisters, or their adult children, to say nothing of their grandchildren, cousins, and members of their extended family.  They really have no life, outside of their public life as General Authorities.  Sister Johnson never complains, but she cannot talk about her family or her personal ambitions without tears in her eyes.  They truly have sacrificed their lives for the Lord.   Our time on earth is precious--we only get one life.  To sacrifice it in His service is as much a martyrdom as it is to lose it in an act of violence.  I now understand better what the Lord meant when he said, “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”  (Matthew 10:39)