What difference does it make when we intentionally and consistently choose to be anxiously engaged in a good cause?
"3 Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation." (Doctrine and Covenants 58: 3)
"27 Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;
28 For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward." (Doctrine and Covenants 58: 27-28)
"Polly Knight was sick when she and the Colesville Saints settled on Leman Copley’s land. The farm had more than seven hundred acres of choice ground, offering enough space for many families to build homes, barns, and shops. Here the Knights could start over and practice their new faith in peace, although many worried that Polly would not be long with them.
Polly’s husband and sons worked quickly, making fences and planting fields to improve the land. Joseph and Bishop Partridge also encouraged the Colesville Saints to consecrate their property according to the law of the Lord.
After the settlement started taking shape, however, Leman withdrew from the church and told the Colesville Saints to get off his property. With nowhere else to go, the evicted Saints asked Joseph to seek the Lord’s direction for them.
“You shall take your journey into the regions westward,” the Lord told them, “unto the land of Missouri.”
Now that they knew Zion would be in Missouri, not Ohio, the Colesville Saints realized they would be among the first church members to settle there. They began to prepare for the journey, and about two weeks after the revelation, Polly and the rest of the branch left the Kirtland area and boarded riverboats that would take them west.
As Polly and her family floated down the river, her greatest desire was to set foot in Zion before she died. She was fifty-five years old, and her health was failing. Her son Newel had already gone ashore to buy lumber for a coffin in case she died before getting to Missouri.
But Polly was determined to be buried nowhere else but in Zion.
Shortly after the Colesville Saints left, the prophet, Sidney, and Edward Partridge set out for Missouri with several elders of the church. They traveled mostly on land, preaching the gospel along the way and talking about their hopes for Zion.
Joseph spoke optimistically about the church in Independence. He told some of the elders that Oliver and the other missionaries were sure to have built up a strong branch of the church there, as they had in Kirtland. Some of the elders took it as a prophecy.
As they neared Jackson County, the men admired the gently rolling prairie around them. With plenty of land for the Saints to spread out, Missouri seemed like the ideal location for Zion. And Independence, with its proximity to a large river and Indian lands, could be the perfect place to gather God’s covenant people.
But when they reached the town, the elders were unimpressed by what they saw. Ezra Booth, a former minister who had joined the church after seeing Joseph heal a woman’s paralyzed arm, thought the area looked dreary and undeveloped. It had a courthouse, a few stores, several log houses—and little else. The missionaries had baptized only a handful of people in the area, so the branch was not as strong as Joseph had expected. Feeling misled, Ezra and others began to question Joseph’s prophetic gifts.
Joseph was disappointed too. Fayette and Kirtland were small villages, but Independence was little more than a backwater trading post. The town was a point of departure for trails going west, so it drew fur trappers and teamsters along with farmers and small businessmen. Joseph had known people in most of these trades all his life, but he found the men in Independence especially godless and rough. What’s more, government agents in the town were suspicious of the missionaries and would likely make preaching to Indians difficult, if not impossible.
Discouraged, he took his concerns to the Lord. “When will the wilderness blossom as the rose?” he asked. “When will Zion be built up in her glory, and where will Thy temple stand?”
On July 20, six days after his arrival, Joseph’s prayers were answered. “This land,” the Lord told him, “is the land which I have appointed and consecrated for the gathering of the saints.”
They had no reason to look elsewhere. “This is the land of promise,” He declared, “and the place for the city of Zion.” The Saints were to purchase as much of the available land as possible, build homes, and plant fields. And on a bluff west of the courthouse, they were to build a temple.
Even after the Lord revealed His will for Zion, some Saints remained skeptical about Independence. Like Ezra Booth, Edward had expected to find a large branch of the church in the area. Instead, he and the Saints were to build Zion in a town where people were wary of them and not at all interested in the restored gospel.
As bishop of the church, he also understood that much of the responsibility for laying the foundation of Zion fell on his shoulders. To prepare the promised land for the Saints, he would have to buy as much of it as possible to distribute as inheritances to those who came to Zion and kept the law of consecration. This meant that he would have to stay in Missouri and move his family permanently to Zion.
Edward wanted to help establish Zion, but so much about the revelation, his new responsibilities, and the area troubled him. One day, as he inspected the land in and around Independence, he pointed out to Joseph that it was not as good as other land nearby. He was frustrated with the prophet and did not see how the Saints could establish Zion there.
“I see it,” Joseph testified, “and it will be so.”
A few days later, the Lord again revealed his word to Joseph, Edward, and the other elders of the church. “Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation,” He declared. “For after much tribulation come the blessings.”
In the revelation, the Lord also chastened Edward’s unbelief. “If he repent not of his sins,” He said of the bishop, “let him take heed lest he fall. Behold his mission is given unto him, and it shall not be given again.”
The warning humbled Edward. He asked the Lord to forgive his blindness of heart and told Joseph that he would stay in Independence and prepare the land of Zion for the Saints. Yet he still worried he was not up to the enormous task that lay ahead.
“I fear my station is above what I can perform to the acceptance of my Heavenly Father,” he confessed in a letter to Lydia. “Pray for me that I may not fall.”
After three weeks of travel, Polly Knight arrived in Independence with the Colesville Saints. She stood feebly on the ground, grateful she had reached the land of Zion. Her body was rapidly failing, though, and two recent converts from the area brought her into their home so she could rest in relative comfort.
As the Knights searched the area for a place to settle, they found the countryside beautiful and pleasant, with rich land they could develop and farm. The people also seemed friendly, even though they were strangers. Unlike some of the elders from Kirtland, the Colesville members believed the Saints could build Zion there.
On August 2, the Saints in Missouri assembled several miles west of Independence to begin work on the first house in Zion. Joseph and twelve men from the Colesville Branch, who symbolically represented the tribes of Israel, laid the first log for the building. Sidney then dedicated the land of Zion for the gathering of the Saints.
The next day, on a plot west of the courthouse in Independence, Joseph carefully laid a single stone to mark the corner of the future temple. Someone then opened a Bible and read from the eighty-seventh psalm: “The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.”
A few days later, Polly died, praising the Lord for supporting her in her suffering. The prophet preached the funeral sermon, and her husband buried her body in a patch of woods not far from the temple site. She was the first Saint laid to rest in Zion.
The same day, Joseph received another revelation: “Blessed, saith the Lord, are they who have come up unto this land with an eye single to my glory, according to my commandments. For those that live shall inherit the earth, and those that die shall rest from all their labors.” (12 After Much Tribulation, Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1, The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846)
And here's the beginning part of the commentary entitled: June 2–8: “Anxiously Engaged in a Good Cause” Doctrine and Covenants 58–59 :
"When the elders of the Church first saw the site of the city of Zion—Independence, Missouri—it was not what they expected. Some thought they would find a thriving, industrious community with a strong group of Saints. Instead, they found a sparsely populated outpost, lacking the civilization they were used to and inhabited by rough frontier settlers rather than Saints. It turned out that the Lord wasn’t asking them just to come to Zion—He wanted them to build Zion.
When our expectations do not match reality, we can remember what the Lord told the Saints in 1831: “Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God … and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:3). Yes, life is full of tribulation, even wickedness, but we can still “bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in [us]” (verses 27–28).
See also Saints, 1:127–33."
Yes, whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, we can still choose to "bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in us" indeed to make things happen according to God's will. And when we do make the choice intentionally and consistently to be anxiously engaged in a good cause, no matter what, we're able to find peace and joy in this troubled world.
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