This part of the chapter is a
great example of why personal narrative is so powerful and important. It would
be one thing for Alma to tell his son about the Savior and the atonement, but
it is a different and more powerful thing to tell about his own experience with
it. There are things that you can only know through experience, and a power of
testimony that only comes by sharing those experiences. When Mormon is
summarizing Alma he never goes into great detail about his sins, which I think
is an important example. The only reason to know more would be to satisfy
curiosity, which is a base emotion. We can know of his pain at sin and joy from
redemption without those details. Which is a relief to know that they don’t
need to be shared in order to have an impact.
It is interesting that Alma tells
his son to be diligent and temperate in all things. I think that is the answer
to being faithful and magnifying your calling without going overboard or
becoming a fanatic about anything. Be diligent, be conscientious in everything
you do, but also be temperate, or moderate. Life is so much about balance, and
I love these two words to describe how we should handle our life.
And then Alma talks about not
being prideful again, which has come up a lot as he talks to his sons. When he
was giving Helaman the list of things he should teach the people humble came up
twice in the same list. And here it is again. Because it is SO easy to forget
that anything I know or can do is a gift from God, and should be for his
service. It is so easy to compare ourselves to other people. Instead I should
wonder why I have been given the gifts I have, how does He want me to use them?
I also need to remember to use
boldness by not overbearance. I think sometimes I get so wrapped up in a cause
or something that I think it right, that I forget to be loving. I don’t bridle
my passions, as he says. People use that to talk about sexual appetites a lot,
but I think it is also about being passionate in a cause, or passionately
angry. We have to “never
let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.”
That is a really difficult challenge for me; I really want to solve problems at
the sacrifice of everything else. I need to focus on loving God’s children,
even the ones that are blocking my problem solving!
I think one of the blessings of
taking the Sacrament every week is remembering my own unworthiness, like Alma
talks about in verse 14. If I really use that opportunity to focus on how much
I need the Savior, and all the mistakes I make and ways I could be better, it
would turn my heart to Him in gratitude, and help me deal with others with more
mercy.
Why does Alma end with “be sober?”
Is he afraid his son won’t take it seriously, or is about distraction in less
serious pursuits? What do I need to be more sober about?
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