Alma 60:15-23

I am reading Rough Stone Rolling, about Joseph Smith, and the beginning of the church. The Lord kept telling the Saints this same thing, if it weren’t for their own wickedness they would have conquered their enemies. I keep thinking about Joseph Smith at the rattlesnakes on the Zion’s Camp march. He told the men not to hurt the snakes, and the change in the world wouldn’t come until we (humans) stopped being violent. I have struggled a lot with anger and impatience, but the last few days I have felt like my heart has been changed, and it’s been much easier to be quiet and calm. Somehow, all these things taken together give me a glimpse of what Zion really is. We as a people will be slowly changed through the atonement of Christ until everything is just about kindness and love. The Celestial Kingdom will come as we become Celestial. Peace comes from righteousness, and most importantly, through the power of God through Christ and His atonement, that gives us opportunity and power to change and become. Zion is people who are one because they are people who have really learned to love God and each other and nothing else.

What enemies is our wickedness allowing to come into our home and have power over us? What enemies have come in? We have seen our children become more angry and violent and bitter and critical. And the critical can lead to doubts and not feeling the Spirit. I feel like this reaffirms the revelations I had about how important it was for our family to read scriptures and have gospel study every day. We need that constant refocusing on the Lord, and opportunities to feel His Spirit. We need to be kinder to each other, especially in the words we say and how we say them. The emotional divisions are as dangerous as the king-men divisions were for the Nephites. And like the king-men, it is usually one of us trying to exercise power over the other. I need to remember that.

Moroni was saying lots of things that were true in this letter, and then he gets to the false accusations in his anger. I am always amazed by Pahoran’s humble response. Sometimes people really are doing things that are unfair or unkind. But Pahoran’s true motivation was to serve, and he could forgive, because he could look at the situation from the perspective of the ones he wanted to serve instead of his own self-interest, as I learned from Cheryl Esplin in her talk about being His hands at the women’s session of General Conference. It really helped me to be forgiving when I was so angry and hurt when trying to serve someone.

Alma 60:15-23