Alma waited until he could see that Zeezrom was ready to
hear. Sometimes I get so anxious about telling someone something that I can
feel myself disobeying the Spirit to wait. Omar tells me I do everything in
life in a hurry, and I can see that this is true. I need to have more patience,
coming from more faith. As I work with the school to make this year work better
for Helaman, I keep thinking about the blessing Omar gave me before school
started to be patient as things get complicated. I want everything to happen
now, and patient has been hard for me. So I am grateful to have had that
specific blessing given to me before I even knew anything would be weird.
We talked about lying to God in YW on Sunday, and it was a
little hard to define. Alma told Zeezrom he had lied to God because God knows
his thoughts and knew he was following the plan of Satan. He had pretended to
be uncovering truth, knowing all along that was not his real intent. Is it
hypocrisy that is lying to God?
It is interesting to notice that Alma and Amulek knew
Zeezrom’s thoughts because of the spirit of prophecy. So the spirit of prophecy
is knowing things there is no human way to know, through the promptings of the
Holy Ghost. It is humbling to think that the times in my life when I receive
promptings, that it is a form of prophecy. And while the daughters of God are
not administrators in His church, he does share His power with them, too.
A lot of times in the Book of Mormon when people are asking
about doctrine I already know, I feel like it is so obvious, how would he not
know that. But there are lots of people in the world right now who don’t know
the truths I know. I am grateful to have been raised in the gospel so that the
amazing truth’s of the kingdom just seem obvious. On the one hand you don’t
always see the wonder of it, and it is perhaps harder to remember to feel
grateful, but on the other hand you never had to think otherwise and have that
fear and doubt.
It is amazing to me that God gives us as much knowledge of
his mysteries as we are willing to accept, even to a fullness. I can feel in
myself what Alma means about hardening your hearts against the word. It’s like
what I was thinking about when preparing lessons for young women’s about
commandments.
When you are not ready to hear, instruction and guidance annoy you, and feel like something to balk at our
fight against. And when you are ready to hear, when
you want to be taught, you are grateful for the guidance and then can learn so
much more and feel so much more through the Spirit. The trick is staying
humble—which is amazingly difficult.
And when you are not humble, and you harden your heart, and
you block out the Spirit, you begin to doubt what you knew, and to question
everything. And then it is so easy to fall away. What does it mean that you are
then taken captive by the devil? I guess that he stops your progression. You
can’t go forward to the goal, that is captivity. And it is certainly his plan
to keep you from progressing, so it is his captivity.
It seems important to think that not only our works, but
specifically our words as a form of our works will condemn us. I really need to
be more careful that the things coming out of my mouth are holy and good. In
all my communication, I really feel like I struggle with this. Of all things,
it is probably also where I most need to pray for help to remember, because I
get going and don’t think about it.
Alma does a good job of describing the terror and shame of standing
before God at judgment time, wanting a mountain to fall on us to hide us, and not
being able to hide. Just having to stand and face our guilt and shame. And then
they die a spiritual death, which is being cast out from God’s presence. I understand
the torture of shame and understanding what you have lost by your choices. Because
this vision doesn’t reconcile with my understanding of even the Telestial world,
I think it must refer to Spirit Prison, the time before resurrection. Except that
he talks about the resurrection first. Is this outer darkness? If it is eternal
torment, it would have to be outer darkness. Eternity is such a long time the thought
of eternal torment for anyone is mind-blowing and heart-breaking for me.
If Adam had eaten the tree of life, there just would have been
no death. Why did the tree of life even exist? So if they had eaten they would have
been forever miserable because the purpse of life would have changed? It would be
a time to prepare to meet God at death. We would be stuck forever in this life I
guess. Like a never ending difficult test, which makes sense when death comes at
the end of a long hard life, or a long hard struggle, and it is seen as a blessing,
and a release. God gave us this hard thing to do for a period of time, but also
blessed us with an ending to it.
And then, in His mercy, He sent angles to men to show them His
glory and tell them His purposes. So we were never just left hear floundering not
knowing what to do. He told us the plan, and gave us rules to keep us save, commandments,
as we work our way through this experience.
I never thought of it before that the penalty for breaking His
first commandment was death, and the penalty for breaking all following commandments
was spiritual death. And Christ swallows up all those penalties, all of that death
(what a horrible thought) through his atonement.
So our job is to not harden our heart. To keep caring about being
good, keep participating in the atonement, and loving His Son. And then his mercy
is enough to cover all our sins. In the end, it always comes down to our humility,
to our choosing Him.
I love that Alma doesn’t just condemn the people, but ends with
an invitation to repent and be happy and safe. He isn’t judging, just explaining
and pleading. But again, seeing that, I suppose, depends on the softness of your
heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment