The Red Shawl – Sunday, July 22, 1984
In a pioneer diary is this story dated July 1858. It seems a Parker family was traveling west in a handcart company. One night as a thunderstorm blew up, they hastily made camp, and it was then the Parkers discovered their six-year-old boy, Arthur, was missing. Robert and Ann Parker spread the alarm to the rest of the camp, and someone remembered seeing the little boy earlier in the day settling down to rest in a wooded area. He was exhausted from the trip.
For two days the men in the camp searched for the missing child, and then, with no alternative, the company moved west. Robert Parker went back alone to continue the search, but as he left his wife, Ann, pinned a red shawl around his shoulders. She said if he found the boy dead to use the shawl to bury him, but if he were alive to signal them as he came back to camp.
Three nights Ann and her children watched, and finally, just as the sun was setting on the third night, they caught a glimpse of the shawl waving in the last rays of day.
The pioneer journal records, “Robert Parker came into camp with his little boy that had been lost. Great joy throughout the camp. The mother’s joy, I cannot describe.”1
Apparently, a nameless woodsman had found the terrified boy and cared for him until his father came.
One who later retold the story asked: “How would you, in Ann Parker’s place, feel toward the nameless woodsman who had saved your little son? Would there ever be anything that he could desire that you could give him that you wouldn’t give?”2 To sense what those parents felt is perhaps to get a clearer idea of what the Lord must feel any time we serve and love his children.
We often profess our gratitude for God. We hope in some small way to show our love for all he does for us, and yet we wonder, “What can I do for the Creator of Heaven and Earth?” The answer is simple. “To worship rightly is to love each other.”3 We divide our flour when another is hungry. We send comfort when he mourns. We lift when the world would drag him down. And, with every gesture, we show we love the Lord.
1 From a talk by Boyd K Packer, April 1970
2 Ibid.
3 Whittier, John Greenleaf, “0 Brother Man!” Music by Robertson, Leroy, J
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July 22, 1984
Broadcast Number 2,866