Joseph Smith's
experience in the grove teaches us that our Heavenly Father
and His Son know and love us individually. God "spake unto
me, calling me by name," Joseph testified. "I was filled with the spirit
of God," he recalled, "and the Lord opened the heavens upon
me and I saw the Lord and he spake unto me, saying Joseph,
my son, thy sins are forgiven thee."
The Lord knew Joseph
had mourned his own sins and the sins of the world. The
Lord's expression of tender forgiveness is available to all
who repent and call on His name.
The Lord knew Joseph
Smith, and in the grove Joseph came to know God, not simply
to know about Him. "For many days I could rejoice with great
joy and the Lord was with me," Joseph recounted. We too, like Joseph,
may seek to come unto Christ, and we may experience the same
rejoicing in our own lives.
