"O How Lovely Was the Morning"

For as long as I can remember visiting the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York has been a dream of mine. I feel blessed to be given the opportunity to walk through the grove at this time of my life with my sweetheart by my side. Going there in the fall was a special treat because the Sacred Grove was literally golden.  Although the exact spot where Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph is not known, what is known is that they did appear and Joseph was chosen as a latter-day prophet to usher in the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and establish His Church on the earth again to never again be taken away.

The book Our Heritage recounts: "On a beautiful spring morning in 1820, alone in a grove of trees near his home, Joseph Smith knelt down and began to offer up the desires of his heart to God, asking for guidance. He described what then happened: 'Immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction. . . .  At this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner appeared that I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me calling me by name and said, pointing to the other--This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!'

As soon as Joseph gained possession of himself, he asked the Lord which of all the religious sects was right and which he should join. The Lord answered that he must join 'none of them, for they were all wrong' and 'all their creeds were an abomination in his sight.' He said that they had a 'form of godliness,' but they denied 'the power thereof.'

When the sun rose on that morning in 1820, Joseph Smith could scarcely have imagined that with the coming of twilight, a prophet would once more walk the earth.  He, an obscure boy living in western New York  had been chosen by God to perform the marvelous work and wonder of restoring the gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ to the earth."

We arrived near dusk and in the quiet solitude, we walked the paths that perhaps Joseph walked and felt the sacredness of the ground we walked on. As we left the Sacred Grove, the sun was setting and I thought of the new dawn and the influence he has had that started in this grove of trees in answer to a humble prayer.