Connecting to the Scriptures

Hello Everyone,

I’m sorry I didn’t post last week.  I was having a rough week and I was feeling like my life was boring (which it is) and I couldn’t possibly have anything interesting to post.  That’s okay though, because I feel like I have so much to say this week to make up for last week.

I was going to keep this a secret until I had completed a little more of it, but I have started a new project.  While I was in Brazil I read the Book of Mormon in eight days.  It was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had with the Book of Mormon and I appreciate it in a more full and beautiful way than I did before.

I started thinking of other ways to more fully and deeply understand the words of the prophets in that book.  I read about Elder Scott, as a huge Christmas present to his family, recording his voice reading the Book of Mormon and then he distributed a copy of this to all of his kids and grandkids.  I loved that idea, but I didn’t think that was what I needed to do at this time.  I thought about going through and reading it again, this time with a focus on putting quotations around when people are actually speaking and paying special attention to the words that the Lord spoke, but again, that didn’t sound quite right.  After lots of reflection and prayer I have decided to hand copy the Book of Mormon.

To read the words of the prophets and copy them in my own handwriting will be a monumental task and will take months of concentrated effort, but I have been feeling for weeks that I lack purpose, that I have nothing to show for my days, that I am not accomplishing anything.  That is not to say that I don’t have goals and that I’m not learning and growing, working and playing, and studying and praying, but I have felt like I was without direction.  The idea of copying a 531 page document by hand is slightly daunting, but monks used to copy illuminated versions of the Bible, and so I can take a few months to connect to the Book of Mormon like never before.  I eagerly look forward to the opportunity to fall to my knees at the end of my project and thank Heavenly Father for the chance I had to undertake this great work.

 

The quote of the week comes from a devotional at BYU Hawaii in 2006 J. Alan Walker.  He said “Feasting upon the words of Christ is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. To truly understand why the Lord asks us to feast upon the words of Christ, I believe that we must first see the bigger picture. It is then that we will really come to understand its true significance. "Seeing the bigger picture," means that we must look at something from a larger perspective. In this case, that perspective is our purpose in life. When we see our existence through this larger purpose, picture, or vision, we can separate the unimportant from the important. With the bigger picture of eternity in our mind, we will come to see that the daily act of feasting upon the words of Christ is essential in order to reach our potential and achieve our eternal purpose.”  This project is an opportunity for me to feast on the words of Christ like I never have before and may never again.  I am so excited to learn from the prophets as I read, study, and write.

Drew