The July 107 Ensignhad an article called “Kindness” in which one of the example stories was of a time the prophet Joseph Smith showed kindness. To me this story is familiar, but I was struck by a deeper truth in it when I read it this time.

The prophet Joseph Smith showed kindness one day when two children got their feet stuck in the mud on the way to school. They both began to cry because they couldn’t get loose. When Joseph saw the predicament, he bent down and pulled each child out of the mud. He cleaned the mud from their shoes. Then he took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away their tears. The children smiled as he spoke kind words to them and then sent them on their way. (p55)

When I think about the context of this story, I imagine it was after a hard rain, and with no hard pavement, the roads were a morass of mud and this was what the children got stuck in, simply by heading for their destination at school. I noticed Joseph went above and beyond the hoped-for help. Not only did he free the children, but he cleaned them off and comforted them. He may have been thinking that if he sent them to school muddy they would get a tongue-lashing from their teacher for coming in with such muddy shoes. He probably had to scrape clods of mud off and  rinse their shoes at a pump nearby.

I also noticed this little story is a neat analogy of how Christ saves us. He finds us stuck in the mud of sin on our journey through life. He finds us crying because we can’t get loose ourselves. He pulls us out, cleans us up, dries our tears and comforts us, and gets us moving again in the right direction so we can arrive clean at our destination of eternal life.