Spiritual Insights...and other stuff

I've been robbed. Someone out there, someone who’s totally miserable, has it out for me. And I know exactly who it is. Do you believe in little people? I do. They get up in the middle of the night and use some kind of thieving contraption to sap all my energy so when I wake up, I’m pooped--completely divested of my vivacity. All that’s left is a semi-liquid-like slop, which, upon hearing the alarm, clumsily spills out of bed onto the floor into a puddle of exhaustion.   I have attempted staying up all night, waiting for them to show up so I can laugh in their puny, little faces while I squish them, but they're too small to see so my efforts to stop them fail every time. I get out of bed in the morning only to find that they've made off with my energy yet again! It is MOST disconcerting, and I only hope I can find a way to exterminate these pests entirely, though I am surviving.  Things used to be worse, you know. If it weren't for some things I learned, they pr...

Amulek describes the atonement as " an  infinite  and  eternal   sacrifice" ( Alma 34:10). Nephi adds that it is "infinite for all mankind " (2 Nephi 25:16; emphasis added). Let's not get too theoretical here, but I think we will agree - and you mathematicians know well - that there are multiple levels of infinity. The level or kind of infinity that really caught my attention this week was mentioned in a segment written by Tad R. Callister on the BYU Religious Study Center's website under "Teaching the atonement." He writes that the atonement is "Infinite in time, both prospectively and retroactively," meaning that it redeems all mankind who lived before it was performed and all those who would live after it was performed. My question is, how could the atonement redeem all the people who lived before it even happened?  To back up Elder Callister, I'll share two scriptures. First, Jarom 1:11 said that the prophets taught the people ...

Have you ever met anyone who just thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread? Let's be honest, the best place to find those people is the high school weight room. Okay, yeah, that was an over-generalization, but no, I'm not talking about the typical football-playing meatheads that we all know and love, I mean a real, king-size, full-blown tool, somebody who thinks they're greater than God Himself. Ever met somebody like that? Whether you have or not, this post is for you. ;) There are several such egomaniacs found within the pages of holy writ, one of which I encountered recently in  Alma 9:6 , who asks the following question: "...Who is God, that sendeth no more authority than one man among this people, to declare unto them the truth of such great and marvelous things?" Though the verse says "they" said this, I imagine some individual was the first to voice those words, for which reason I'm going to refer to said individual as ...

Lately, I've been reading the Book of Mormon backwards. Moroni 10:33 to 1 Nephi 1:1. I don't know what brought me to do it, perhaps I needed to add little seasoning to my study. (I decided to read the individual verses the normal way, fyi. Reading every word backwards seemed ill-advised.) In today's reading, a few verses in Helaman 7 caught my attention. Nephi is on his tower calling Zarahemla to repentance. He bemoans their wicked state and asks, "Why has [God] forsaken you?" He subsequently answers this question himself: It is because ye have hardened your hearts; yea, ye will not hearken unto the voice of the good shepherd; yea, ye have provoked him to anger against you.¹ Nephi declares that the "good shepherd" is angry at the people of Zarahemla, who, by metaphorical implication, are His "sheep." Who is the good shepherd? Jesus Himself said, "I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep ."² Diving into the metaphor, we find these...

What happens to you when you're hungry? I usually start losing focus on whatever I'm doing, maybe get a headache. I try to eat before I get too frustrated, but sometimes circumstances don't allow it. While reading my scriptures this week, I found all kinds of ways people reacted to hunger and it was rather intriguing, so I decided to make a list. First, I read about when Giddianhi got hungry in 3 Nephi 4. He went and laid siege on all the Nephites to try and murder them and steal their food. Here's what Mormon's abridgement of that says: 4 Therefore, there was no chance for the robbers to plunder and to obtain food, save it were to come up in open battle against the Nephites; That is what I call, "extreme hanger." Turns out it didn't work so well for Giddianhi and his gangsters: they were all slaughtered or imprisoned. None escaped. But still, I went ahead and wrote on my list: try to kill someone for their food Then I read about the widow ...

While reading in 1 Nephi 9 with my wife - I mean, my lovely wife -, I came upon those two tender verses at the end (v. 5-6) where Nephi explains that the Lord has commanded him to make these plates "for a wise purpose...which purpose I [Nephi] know not." Now, think about it. Here we are reading the account of Nephi and he tells us that he didn't even know why he was writing it. He's writing The Book of Mormon , for crying out loud - this is the most correct of any book on earth, it contains the fullness of the gospel, the knowledge contained within is essential for our eternal exaltation. And here we have good 'ole Nephi engraving in his spiritual record for God knows why. Now, given the rest of Nephi's writings, I'm guessing he wasn't 100% ignorant of what would become of his record. However, in these verses he shows his willingness to do whatever the Lord commands him to do, whether or not he knows why. Nephi has total trust in the Lord; he might ...