To teach only one thing

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the October 1986 Conference.

This talk by Elder Eyring was meaningful to me. I have been thinking about the question he asks, about if we had the chance to teach "only one thing," what would it be? I worry so much about all the things I want to teach my children. Yes, I know they will learn more by example than anything, and I'm only too aware that I can't really control what ends up making an impression on them…but even though I have years of time with them, I can already relate to the feeling that "time and opportunity are scarce…with people who don't think they need your teaching." With the older ones, I feel an urgency to use the time I have left for only the most important things! And this talk got me thinking about what those might be.

Tonight, or tomorrow, many of us will pray with real intent, and perhaps with tears, over someone whose happiness would bring us happiness, who has been promised all the blessings of peace that come with baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and yet who counts the promises worthless. …My heart is drawn especially to those asking the question we all have asked: “How can I be sure I have done all I can to help?” 

Fifty years ago, in October conference, President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., of the First Presidency, gave this answer, which I carry copied on a card: 

“It is my hope and my belief that the Lord never permits the light of faith wholly to be extinguished in any human heart, however faint the light may glow. The Lord has provided that there shall still be there a spark which, with teaching, with the spirit of righteousness, with love, with tenderness, with example, with living the Gospel, shall brighten and glow again, however darkened the mind may have been. And if we shall fail so to reach those among us of our own whose faith has dwindled low, we shall fail in one of the main things which the Lord expects at our hands”. …

President Clark also suggested what we can do. He did not suggest a single approach to reach all people. But he described what every effort that succeeds in fanning the spark will include. 

Teaching is first. But what should we teach? Suppose time and opportunity are scarce, as they generally are with people who don’t think they need your teaching. If you had the gift, and the chance, to teach only one thing, what would it be?…

If I had the chance to teach one thing, it would be what it means and how it feels to exercise faith in Jesus Christ unto repentance.

There's more, at the link here.

Other posts in this series:

What is your testimony of the Book of Mormon?—by Jan Tolman