This past week for my Come Follow Christ study I’ve been reading and listening to 3 Nephi 8-11 in the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ. 3 Nephi 11 tells the account of Jesus Christ visiting the Nephites in ancient America after His resurrection. I’ve always loved this story, because it says that Jesus let each of the 2500 people there come to Him, and feel the prints of the nails in His hands. If I did my math right, that means it took him almost 4 hours to do that, if each person took only 5 seconds. I like to think that He let each person linger as long as they wanted to, so they could feel these emblems of His sacrifice, look into His eyes, and feel His infinite love. So maybe He was there all day, even all night, maybe even another day and or night. Who knows how long this took? It’s so comforting and loving to know that we each have a God, our Savior Jesus Christ, who is willing to spend as much time needed by each of us to feel loved. Also that this God is the only Begotten Son of our Heavenly Father, who also knows and loves us and is willing and able to spend energy on us to feel loved, whatever from that takes. We just have to open our spiritual eyes to see this.

I love the painting by Walter Rane above, which beautifully illustrates Christ’s love during this event. The original painting hangs in the Lincoln Square building owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New York City. That building is being remodeled, however, as when my husband was there with my daughter and her family last month, they attended a meeting for our church in a rented building. (I’ve loved Walter Rane’s work for years. You can see more of it here on his site. Did you know he did the illustrations for the American Girl Kit books? When I grow up I want to draw like him!)

Elder David A. Bednar, an apostle of Jesus Christ, wrote the lyrics to a song inspired by this story in 3 Nephi 11, as well as a book, shown above. Here’s the song below, with the music composed by Paul Cardall. The sheet music is here. The song is so beautiful! The backstory behind the song is here. May we each follow the example of Jesus and minister one by one.

(If you want more music written by other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, get my devotionals ebook. It’s full of links to music, poems, songs, stories of God moving in people’s lives, arranged by monthly themes. Go here to get it.)