Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13

This is not the boy-prophet of Palmyra,
nor the triumphant leader of Nauvoo—
but Joseph as he stood in his final, harrowing month:
June 1844,
when time was running out,
and he knew it.

He stands alone,
facing the quiet eye of a storm he could no longer outrun.
The light in this image is deliberate—
warm, even golden,
but strained.
It is the kind of light that comes just before dusk.

Behind him, Nauvoo rises—
not as a city of refuge,
but as a symbol of the promise
and the burden he bore.

Joseph is upright, composed—
yet inwardly, already departing.
This was a man who had seen angels and courthouses,
betrayal and beatitude.

A man who once looked forward with vision,
and now looked back in silence.
This is Joseph at the edge:
not at the beginning of a dispensation,
but at the end of a life.

And yet, even here,
he is not undone.
There is still purpose in his stance.
Still defiance.
Still, somehow—
faith in what was to come:
the gospel he restored,
and the church he left behind.