Today I read Alma 32, the famous chapter on faith. Because it is so typical that most people only use this chapter for the 2nd half of it, the lecture on faith, I had thought not to talk about faith. God however has other plans. But I do not wish to talk about the fact that faith is compared to a seed. I wish instead to discuss one phrase that Alma tells those farmers who came to him. He told them that if the seed was good and it would not produce it was because their ground was barren, something every farmer could relate to.
That phrase stuck with me. As a missionary, I saw many people who the seed took root in their soil but allowed the seed to be destroyed by spiritual crows or neglect. In Alma's speech to these men, he mentions that the seed must be nourished. President Gordon B. Hinkley also mentioned that one of the 3 things each new convert needs is nourishment by the good word of God.
It is true that each new convert to the church needs to constantly be nourished by those who are strong in the faith. They will have many questions, they will need help and usually the person they trust the most at that point is the missionaries. I remember we helped a young woman named Sherry get baptized that each week she would come to church with questions written down that had occurred to her during her reading of the Book of Mormon that week and she and I would spend about an hour discussing her questions and helping her learn. I think my favorite question she brought me was "Who is Moses?". I remember being dumb struck for a moment and she continued that people keep talking about Moses in the Book of Mormon but she had no clue who that was. She had never heard of him and so I spent about 10 minutes telling her all about Moses. Those are some of my fondest memories from my mission.
However, the need for nourishment by others does not absolve the new member, or old member, from nourishing the seed on their own. Most new converts to the church have a hunger to learn, to do, to know. Somewhere along the lines that fire dies down. I've seen it dozens of times. It also happens to missionaries who come home. I remember I once heard someone say, "If you want to feel the Spirit like a missionary, you need to live like a missionary." For most of us, that is just not possible in this world. but there are things we can do to maximize our spirituality.
Another time, when my roommate was being taught by the sister missionaries, one of them commented on the fact that we played a lot of video games. She commented that she hoped we read our scriptures half as much as we played our games. As you may have already guessed, we did not in fact read our scriptures even a 10th of the time we spent playing games. And my spirituality suffered for it. But it was as Alma said, it was not because the seed had gone bad, it was in fact because I had allowed my ground to grow barren through neglect.
I remember when I was the Stake Young Single Adult Representative and 2 young women in particular fell away from the church despite our best efforts. They had been the victim of spiritual crows eating the seeds, as the Savior put it in the parable of the sower. The seed was good and was just beginning to take root when someone came along and did/said something to them to make them doubt the goodness of the seed. As a result those young women fell away from the church. To this day I can't help but feel I should have done more.
All too often, we mistake the things of God with the things of the world. I have blogged in the past about a friend who thinks God is ok with his life because his life is going well. But I know he is not nourishing the seed in him and it is barely alive. I've often been amused by the statement, I was offended. What that actually means is the person's pride was hurt and so they stopped giving the seed nourishment until in some cases you would never have known they at one point had the seed take root in them.
I could honestly go on for quite some time about this, but I think the point is clear. We need to make sure the reason the seed does not take root in us is not because of our own neglect. The seed is good, the message is pure. If we have a problem with it, the problem is with us. And deep down I think each of us that fall into that category, whether permanently or temporarily, know it. It can be hard to look yourself in the mirror at first when you know what you are doing is wrong. I should know. Sadly, like most sin, it becomes easier over time until in some cases we have convinced ourselves that the issue is not us, but the seed itself. And thus we carefully braid our own cord and dance and skip merrily on our way down to hell.
May we all recognize our own personal needs and attend to them in a timely fashion. No one should have to suffer for their own sins, not when the Savior has provided a way for us to avoid it. May we all strive to live a life as pure as He did. Until tomorrow.
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