Day 28: Learn To Be More Wise

I am grateful for good books. I love to read. Always have. Thanks due largely to my Mom who took the time to read to me. Thank you, thank you Mama!

I'm hoping to pass this addiction onto my son with our weekly trips to the library and nightly reading sessions cuddled up together in the rocking chair. It makes my heart jump for joy when he grabs a book out of our library bag, runs to me with it and says, "Mama, read".

To me, there is not a better book out there than the Book of Mormon. I love it. I find it ironic that the Lord preserved a record of a people that inhabited this land, rose to greatness, witnessed the coming of the Messiah and yet fell out of existence within four hundred years.

With Mormon we ask, "O ye fair sons and daughters, ye fathers and mothers, ye husbands and wives, ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen!" (Mormon 6:19)

Easy.

"O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you! Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen." (Mormon 6:17-18)

Are we that much better? We're only 234 years into our history as an organized country and to drown it in syrupy sweetness we aren't looking too good. Mormon saw us--he saw our day. I won't even try to sugar-coat his description. Read Mormon 8:35-41 if you have the guts, and brace yourself.

Mormon tells us in the next chapter why we have this record--why the Book of Mormon has been handed down from generation to generation and brought forth miraculously in this day by the workings of God upon a humble farm boy in upstate New York.

"he [meaning God] hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been." (Mormon 9:31)

I, as he states a line before 'give thanks unto God' for it. It is totally erroneous that you have to make a mistake to learn the lesson. We do not have to be a two-part saga of destruction alongside the Nephites in the history of this land. But we will be. Oh yes, we will if we aren't "wise in the days of [our] probation" (Mormon 9:28) We will become another chapter in the tragic tale of those who fail to keep the Lord's commandments if we don't "come unto the Lord with all [our] hearts, and work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling before him". (Mormon 9:27)

Sorry, this sounds so dooms-dayish but I know it is true. No empty chairs at the table please.
No empty chairs. . .