Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Mosiah 2:23-25

"And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him.
And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?
And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you."
Mosiah 2:23-25


I love King Benjamin so much.  What a great, great man.  This is part of his speech to his people, which takes up many chapters and is all golden.  This part of it can seem a little harsh, but I really love it.  I think that so often we want to feel important and worthwhile, but instead of finding a way to feel those things, we substitute pride, and feeling like we're better than someone else gives us that sense of value that we're seeking... or at least a close enough substitute that we run with it.  And we don't want to owe God anything or feel obligated to him because then we'll feel guilty for ignoring him.  So much of us wants to focus on me, me, me instead of God or "us" as brothers and sisters and as a community.  It's hard to get past those feelings sometimes... the desire to focus on ourselves rather than everyone else.  And, assuredly, God isn't going to make us.  But King Benjamin tries to explain it to us here... We misunderstand our relationship with God, often.  We think that we are his equals, just because we have that divine potential... but we're not.  We're children.  And let's remember how dangerous disobedient child gods can be. Instead of acting like toddlers, having screaming fits in public about how we're BIG and should be able to do whatever the crap we want, let's grow up a little, and learn from our father, who loves us beyond imagining, how to handle our power and our potential.  As we recognize our dust-level lack of knowledge in how to become like God, maybe we can be humble enough to realize that no one else in the universe can teach us to walk on water. :)  ... or anything else that we are really going to need to know as we slowly become so much more than we realize.

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