"Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity."
Moroni 10:20
This is some really good instruction from Moroni and God. I think sometimes we try to practice little parts of the gospel, thinking that we can do this one part and get to the other later, or we prefer this part and really don't want to think about the responsibility of the other part. :) But it is all interconnected. We can't exercise faith in something if we don't have hope, and we can't have hope if we don't have charity/love. And the other way too... we have to have them all.
There is even more involved in this interconnectedness too. Moroni 7:42-44 show us how meekness and a belief in Christ fit into the system. And, really, everything in the gospel is connected. That's why all the law and the prophets could be summed up in Matthew 7:12 ("all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them") and 22:37-40 (love god and love our neighbors as ourselves)... because *everything* is tied into love, and love is tied into everything else.
Love isn't just one feeling, or ingredient, but a mixture of emotion, and effort, and hope, and faith, and... you see where I am going here. It is a recipe. We have to mix a lot of things together to get the perfect love of God. We get it wrong a lot, and mix up lust or really selfish or immature kinds of love and even though sometimes we don't realize it at first, when we compare them to the real thing, we realize that we've been doing it wrong and that this kind is kind of disgusting. So, today, let's study the recipes in the scriptures, and we can start here with today's verse. Let's stop trying to love (and live) without faith and hope. Let's remember to trust God, to look for the positive around us, to love the people around us. As we do, if we're lacking in an ingredient, let's pray earnestly and God will help us with it. He'll grant us comfort, help us see the hope of the sunrise, or help us to have the faith to keep going. He will fill us with his love. Which, as we know from elsewhere in the scriptures (1 Nephi 8:10-12), is the good kind, and which will bring us joy and happiness.
Moroni 10:20
This is some really good instruction from Moroni and God. I think sometimes we try to practice little parts of the gospel, thinking that we can do this one part and get to the other later, or we prefer this part and really don't want to think about the responsibility of the other part. :) But it is all interconnected. We can't exercise faith in something if we don't have hope, and we can't have hope if we don't have charity/love. And the other way too... we have to have them all.
There is even more involved in this interconnectedness too. Moroni 7:42-44 show us how meekness and a belief in Christ fit into the system. And, really, everything in the gospel is connected. That's why all the law and the prophets could be summed up in Matthew 7:12 ("all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them") and 22:37-40 (love god and love our neighbors as ourselves)... because *everything* is tied into love, and love is tied into everything else.Love isn't just one feeling, or ingredient, but a mixture of emotion, and effort, and hope, and faith, and... you see where I am going here. It is a recipe. We have to mix a lot of things together to get the perfect love of God. We get it wrong a lot, and mix up lust or really selfish or immature kinds of love and even though sometimes we don't realize it at first, when we compare them to the real thing, we realize that we've been doing it wrong and that this kind is kind of disgusting. So, today, let's study the recipes in the scriptures, and we can start here with today's verse. Let's stop trying to love (and live) without faith and hope. Let's remember to trust God, to look for the positive around us, to love the people around us. As we do, if we're lacking in an ingredient, let's pray earnestly and God will help us with it. He'll grant us comfort, help us see the hope of the sunrise, or help us to have the faith to keep going. He will fill us with his love. Which, as we know from elsewhere in the scriptures (1 Nephi 8:10-12), is the good kind, and which will bring us joy and happiness.
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