Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Book of Mormon: Bookended in Mercy

Here's an interesting observation a girl made in my Religion 121 class, a study of the Book of Mormon. It's pretty interesting; even Brother Sturm (an excellent professor, by the way) commented on how he'd never noticed it before.

In 1 Nephi 1:20, it speaks of searching for mercy. "But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen..." Nephi is plainly saying that he will show us (those who study the Book of Mormon) the mercies of Christ.

Then, again, in Moroni 10:3, about 527 pages later, Moroni tells us to "remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in you hearts."

In my scriptures today, next to 1 Nephi 1:20, I wrote, "Search for Mercy" then x-ref. it to Moroni 10:3, next to which I wrote, "Remember God's Mercy" then, of course, x-ref. it back to 1 Nephi.

5 comments:

kyledawn said...

did i ever tell you that i tried to read the book of mormon once? my friend jonna let me borrow hers and then i never found enough time to read it so she let me have her copy. now, someday, i'll read it! why is it that i always meet fun mormon friends during my national park experiences?! i love you mallie ... hope you love college!

Anonymous said...

you should, it's a great book! i hope you have fun in school too, and i hear you had a great time in bulgaria! rock on! (tochka!!!)

ML said...

I'm going to remember this and cross-reference my copy too. What a great way it'll be to summarize the year!

Anonymous said...

Great insight, maybe I should actually start reading my scriptures again on a regular basis. I think I will share that thought with johnny.

Anonymous said...

I think that the Lord keeps refering to mercy because we need different definitions of it. You can talk of mercy but I have found living here that many 'Christians' define mercy as applying only to other Christians or to whites or to people in their own class. A very nice sister in our branch refered to another as 'trailer trash'. She did not mean it in a hateful way but the language use shows that people make distinctions. I think that the Lord makes NO distinctions. For some reason we still feel the need to separate ourselves from others. In this country more and more distinctions are being made of those with Turkish or Moroccan ancestry. It is even turning to 'foreiner' of which, I am.
We have so much to learn.