It's All About Redemption

My fingers feel pretty rusty. I've actually got at least 3 topics that I want to write about and I'm sad that I waited so long because most of the emotion and flow of it will be hard to recreate. I've been enjoying posting more small inspirational things via fb, and I guess it left me voiceless here. Fear not posterity; those posts are also in book form so not everything I thought about was lost.

For Seminary. I currently only teach on-line seminary. I know. "Only." As if that isn't enough or something. I have to say. I miss teaching every morning something fierce. I feel like my ability to teach effectively is regressing. I do teach the 14-16 year olds Sunday School every week, and I have been working hard on doing more leading kids on their own journey of discovery than dump into your brain teaching.  But, it's hard and it takes lots of practice.

My story about redemption.

I was putting together a lesson for my weekly seminary conference with my on-line students. We've got several extra days this semester so that frees us up to add in some extra lesson. We have been reading about Ammon and Aaron in Alma and there are just so many really great applications for our lives embedded in the several different stories in there. For my lesson tonight I wanted to focus on things not turning out perfect just because you're on an errand for the Lord. To do that I decided to pull out several blocks of scripture to answer this question: What can we learn about being a missionary?

Here is my scripture journey:

Mosiah 27:8-11, 18-19, 

Mosiah 28:1-7

Alma 17:2-3, 5, 9-12

Alma 18

Alma 20:29-30

Alma 21:4-5, 9-10, 16

Alma 22

After this journey on what we can learn about being a missionary and the three different experiences with falling to the earth by Ammon, Lamoni, and King Lamoni, I took a break from my lesson plan to ponder and I watched a movie trailer. It was the trailer for "I can only Imagine." It's the story of how the song was written and the story of redemption for the father of the son who wrote the song. The father went from a terrible man to an inspiration. 

That's when this scripture journey that I had just been on revealed something to me with a force that I hadn't expected. Starting back a little earlier in our story of Alma the younger and the Sons of Mosiah was Alma the older who was a priest for the wicked King Noah. He decided he didn't like who he was and believed the words of Abinidi. This Alma had a kid named Alma (the younger) who had friends, the sons of Mosiah, and they spent their time fighting against the church. We get to see Lamanites convert. Even kings. We see their people lay down their weapons of war. All of the sudden it hit me. These few chapters were telling some of the greatest stories of redemption. It's never too late. You can go from being the worst person to the best. Change is possible. Immediately after this major revelation it occurred to me that that is precisely the story of all the books of scripture, but most of the transformations aren't that huge. I guess I'd also never bothered to look at the bigger picture in a way that I did tonight. That's the cool thing about the slow process of growing your testimony into conversion. It's nothing new or magical that you didn't already know, but it somehow finds a way down deep into your heart and you move from knowing about something to knowing it. Believing it not believing in it. Unfortunately there aren't adequate words to express how that knowledge changes. I'm sure Elder Maxwell has probably already explained it somewhere, but I'm currently only able to express it the way I can. 

I purposely left out the things I was pulling out from those scripture blocks for someone to take their own journey and find what they can in those scriptures about being a missionary or how those events tie together and what Alma wanted you to get from it. My hope is that you can find yourself in there and receive revelation on how to apply it to your life.