Thursday, April 26, 2001

Mormon 9:4

"Behold, I say unto you that ye would be more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your filthiness before him, than ye would to dwell with the damned souls in hell."
Mormon 9:4


You know, this doesn't seem like a very happy scripture at first glance... but I think that, overall, it really is.  It is basically telling us that God doesn't assign us to different places to punish us.  He prepares different places for us so that we can be comfortable and happy where we are.  For instance... if we struggled through French 101, taking it three times and never quite mastering it, we would never be comfortable living someplace where only French was spoken.  We'd be resentful and feel like an outsider.  God provides us places to spend eternity where we will be comfortable.  It isn't to punish us, but to spare us pain.  And, really, the gospel is all about learning to be comfortable in the presence of God.  If we never talk to him, never think about him... deny him or reject him... we're not going to be comfortable living with him after this life.  So, the happiness in this scripture to me is that God provides *everyone* a place where they can be happy.  Our challenge is to grow comfortable with the things of God... so that we *can* be happy with him.

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