Fast & Testimony

We had a great testimony meeting today, and it was my privilege to conduct, so I was able to bear my testimony prior to hearing from the members of the ward. In my remarks I referred to a scripture that was shared in our PEC meeting this morning. The connection between this and some of my earlier blog entries here was powerful to me.

The scripture comes from Alma 60, a section of the Book of Mormon that I typically skim quickly; I find the war chapters slow and boring. But the message that was shared this morning was impressive. Beginning in verse 21, we read: "Do ye suppose that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make use of the means which the Lord has provided for us?" The first counselor in the Elders Quorum, who shared this with us, asked that we listen as if this were being addressed to us individually as home teachers, which pricks the conscience of inconsistent home teachers like myself.

Verse 22 continues: "will ye sit in idleness while ye are surrounded with thousands of those, yea, and tens of thousands, who do also sit in idleness, while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding?"

Now, our ward is big (1000+ members, generally ~200 in sacrament meeting), but we don't measure in the tens of thousands. But our ward covers a large section of the city, home to easily tens of thousands of children of God to whom we are to preach the gospel. It's certainly not a time for idleness.

But this isn't just a feel-bad-for-not-doing-your-home-teaching message. I back up to verse 20, which ends with this question: "? Have ye forgotten the many times we have been delivered out of the hands of our enemies?"

This, of course, takes me back to my most recent entry on 1 Nephi 1:20 and the idea of deliverance. Clearly, Moroni is taking us back to this theme of deliverance in his epistle to Pahoran. And clearly, we see in his words a testimony of the many times and ways in which his people had been saved in the past.

But as we apply this message to the spiritual duty of home teaching, we can focus this idea on our need to be spiritually delivered, to be saved from our sins and our weaknesses.

And in this I find a model for how we can serve the Lord. Like Moroni, we should be rallying our troops; it is the role of priesthood leaders to inspire those whom they serve to action.

Like Pahoran, we should not be upset when we are called to repentance, even when we are not in the wrong. Instead, we should be grateful for the commitment of those with whom we serve.

And like the Nephites, we should gather around the standard of truth, bearing witness of what we know and acting on that knowledge. Luckily for us, we don't need to dress in the war attire depicted in the Arnold Frieberg painting of Moroni and the Standard of Liberty.