Seeking After Our Own Salvation

I was reading Enos today and I realized that seeking after your own salvation is actually one of the most selfless things you can do. It's like when they're going over the emergency procedures on a plane and they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on before you try to help anyone else with their mask. If you look at the sequence of Enos's prayer, he first prays for his own salvation, and then that of his brethren, and finally, he prays for his enemies. But if you look at some of the details you can actually learn a lot. So, when Enos was praying for forgiveness for his sins, he says he "cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul." He did this all day long and well into the night, and the voice of the Lord came unto him and said, thy sins are forgiven thee, go to, thy faith hath made thee whole. Now, I want to focus on that word "whole" for a moment. When Enos receives forgiveness, he is filled with the desire to save his brethren and it says that he prayed with his "whole" soul. It doesn't say he prays with his whole soul when he was praying for himself, and that is because his faith had not yet made him whole. Until we can obtain forgiveness for our own sins, we are going to have a hard time finding the energy and the compassion and the desire to help anyone else, and that is at least partly because all of those good intentions and feelings with which God might fill our souls will leak out through all the cracks and wounds in our soul. But if we can obtain forgiveness and healing through faith and through the Atonement of Jesus Christ such that we are made whole, then we will be able to fill up with the light and love of our Savior and desire nothing more than to share that light with those around us. But we can't go out and help make others whole until we have the faith to be healed and whole ourselves. Then, when we pray and serve others, we can do so with our whole soul, meaning not just all of our soul, but all of our unbroken soul. When our soul is not whole, then we cannot see outside of ourselves. When our wounds are healed, then we can reach out to our friends and loved ones, and we can work together to knit our hearts in love and unity and make whole our relationships and small communities. And once the soul of our community is whole and healed, then we can look outside of our community to those who are indifferent or even hostile, just as Enos prayed first for the Nephites, and then for the Lamanites. If we want to heal the hurts and the evils of the world, let us first heal the hurts and evils in our own soul, and then in our own house, and then in our own neighborhood. It is not selfish to work out our own salvation first because it is not possible to help others find hope and healing and salvation in a meaningful way if our own soul is just as broken and bewildered as theirs. Also, a shout out to all of the fathers today on Father's Day because the book of Enos wouldn't even exist if "the words which [Enos] had often heard [his] father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into [his] heart." Like Enos, my father has consistently and tirelessly drilled into my heart a deep, deep well of wise words and precious gospel truths and I love and honor him today and every day.