"Will Ye Not Now Return Unto Me"

It is so easy to criticize others and questioning why they do the stupid things they do. When I see someone smoking I just think, “How can you possibly be doing that! You know how dangerous it is! You know it can give you cancer and lung disease and you know it can kill you!” And in my head I can’t fathom why somebody would still smoke. It makes no sense to do something when you know how deadly the consequences are. And then I read 3 Nephi 9:13, which says, “Will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins… that I may heal you?” I often have the same attitude as the smoker. I always know the consequences of my actions, even if I sometimes I ignore that label, because I am a fallen human being who sometimes gives in to things that sound good now, but potentially destroy what I really want. And Christ is pleading with us to stop and to go to Him. He gives us a warning and then gives us a way to be completely healed when we don’t listen to Him. And he doesn’t look at us judgmentally when we mess up, like we so often look at others. He is so patient with us. I’m sure that sometimes he just thinks, “Please stop doing this. I can’t bear to watch you do these things when you have so much potential. Please come to me and let me heal you.” His hand is always reaching out to us, and he is so willing to help us, if we will only reach up and let him.

"Could Not Be Frightened"

We live in a scary world. There is disease and war and murder-all kinds of things that we could reasonably be afraid of. Fortunately, we are not left alone through all of this. Because of our Savior we can have hope and we can feel peace. 3 Nephi 3:12 says of the Nephite leader, Lachoneus, that he “was a just man, and could not be frightened by the demands and the threatenings of a robber.” It would be a natural reaction to be terrified if you were threatened by robbers. It is amazing to me to know that the gospel can bring this level of peace to somebody. By knowing that there is a plan in life, a plan that extends much farther than this life, we don’t have to be afraid of wordly things. While there are a lot of bad things that can happen to us, lots of things that could “ruin” our lives, there is no man that can permanently destroy us. Men can make life really awful for us, but if we stay close to the Lord, do what we know we should, and try our best to become like Him, we have nothing to fear. Things will get hard, but things will get better. I love the quote “He never said it would be easy, he said it would be worth it.” This is the lesson we can learn from Lachoneus. We don’t need to fear what men can do to us because the Lord is over all things and we have the potential for celestial glory. 

"They Cannot Fall"

Helaman 5:12 has so many amazing things to learn from it, but there are two main things that stick out to me. The first is when it says, “when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds.” It doesn’t say he might do it, or there’s a possibility that he won’t send any temptations our way, it says when. Satan will go after everyone. Everyone will have trials and temptations, and as the scripture says, they will be mighty. And this seems to make life sound scary and hopeless.  But then this assurance of struggles is followed by an assurance of hope and victory. It says, “because of the rock upon which ye are built…a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.” I love that. They cannot fall. We might stumble and trip and falter, but we won’t fall down. Just how there is no doubt that Satan will send adversity our way, there is no doubt that if we will rely on our Savior that we will prevail. Christ didn’t say to us that he might be able to help us out or that he’ll see what he can do, but he might not be able to save us. He promised us that if we will make him our foundation, if we will follow him, he will not fail us. If our lives are centered on him and we try our hardest to become the person that God intended us to be, then the devil cannot prevail over us. With Christ we have the power to overcome all of the mighty winds and storms that we face. With Christ we cannot fall.

Exceedingly Rejoice

When I was watching the Superbowl yesterday, at the end of the game my sister wondered, since the two coaches are brothers, how long the losing brother would be upset with the other brother and not want to talk to him. I immediately thought about Captain Moroni. In Alma 59: 1 it says of Moroni, “he was exceedingly rejoiced because of the welfare, yea, the exceeding success which Helaman had had.” It is amazing to me that Moroni could be so righteous and so concerned with others that he would be happy when someone else got what he was wishing he had. It can be so hard to feel happy about other people’s achievements. But what if we could just love each other enough to feel happy when others are happy? To be happy when they achieve their goals and dreams? This world has so much focus on being the best and making sure you get what you want. And we tend to believe that anyone can achieve success if they work at it. But the moment they do, we feel upset and jealous of them. It would do us a lot of good if we would all try to be a little more like Moroni. What if when our brother won the Superbowl, instead of being bitter about it, we could be “exceedingly rejoiced” because of their success? Or if a coworker got the promotion we had been hoping for and instead of holding a grudge against them we sincerely congratulated them? We would all be so much happier if we would take this little lesson from Moroni and rejoice for others.

Captain Moroni

When I read about Captain Moroni, I can’t help but be in awe. He was such an incredible man. There are a couple instances that really impress me about him. One is in Alma 46: 12 where he creates the title of liberty, which says, “In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children.” He is a guy who has his priorities straight. He knows what is important to him. You can tell that he cares about God and he cares about his family. Another place is when he is writing a letter to Ammoron regarding Ammoron’s refusal to exchange prisoners on his terms. In Alma 54: 12 he says, “And behold, if ye do not this, I will come against you with my armies; yea, even I will arm my women and my children, and I will come against you and I will follow you even into your own land, which is the land of our first inheritance; yea, and it shall be blood for blood, yea, life for life; and I will give you battle even until you are destroyed from off the face of the earth.” He knows what he wants, he doesn’t give up, and he doesn’t let evil win. It is clear that he is on the Lord’s side. The strength and courage of this man is especially evident in Alma 48: 17, where it says, “Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men.” I think he is someone that we could all afford to be a little more like. 

The Atonement

In Alma 36 Alma tells his son Helaman about his repentance and conversion to the gospel. I think this story shows Alma as the epitome of the healing powers that the Atonement can bring. He wasn’t just on the edge of good and bad, he was farther away from God than I think most people ever come close to.  And yet, he repented and turned his life around. He moved on from his mistakes and moved the Lord’s work along. Alma’s life teaches us that it doesn’t matter who you are, where you are, or what you’ve done, the Atonement works for you. No exceptions. President David O. McKay once said that “The purpose of the gospel is to make bad men good and good men better.” Alma shows that it does just that. In Luke 5: 31-32, Christ says, “They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance." When we mess up, that is when we need Christ the most, not when we should feel like we aren’t worthy to go to him. He wants us to be happy. He wants us to reach our full potential and return to him. And more than anything he wants to help us with it. We are a fallen and sinful people so we need Christ, we literally cannot do it without him. Just like he helped to change Alma, he will help to change us. If we will turn our lives over to Christ he will help to mold us into the person we’re meant to become.

"Ye Shall One Day Rest"

This week in the Book of Mormon I read Alma 34:41 and it really stood out to me. It says, "But that ye have patience, and bear with those afflictions, with a firm hope that ye shall one day rest from all your afflictions." When I see something that says you need to have patience I am quickly reminded of the fact that I have very little. I usually think of patience in terms of being patient with people, but this scripture made me look at it in a different way. I think it is so easy to become frustrated with the situations that we are in, easy to think that everything is going wrong and nothing will ever go right. In the midst of a trial it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This scripture is both empowering and comforting to me. It reminds me that I need to keep working my hardest in this crazy thing called life, but that there is such an incredible reward at the end. Life is hard. There are so many trials and heartaches and distractions that can keep us from seeing that all these things are temporary, that there is an end to them. But as this scripture says, we need to have a firm, unshakable hope that one day we will no longer suffer, that one day all of our pains will go away. If we will patiently bear our afflictions we receive eternal life, and there is no greater blessing that we could receive. After all, “he never said it would be easy, he only said it would be worth it” (Anonymous).