Praying for the past

So I got this random awesome idea while reading the scriptures one day. I was reading about how the Lamanites were losing many of their sons and daughters because they were dissenting and joining the Gadianton robbers and stuff. I kind of felt sorry for them, and then I had this thought: Why don't you pray for them? The very next thought I had was, Am I seriously allowed to do that?!?! So I did. I also figured that as long as I'm praying for them, I might as well pray for Nephi and Captain Moroni and Jesus suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane. It felt strange praying for things that I already knew the outcome of, and sometimes I wondered whether my prayer was actually changing anything because it was in the past. But I kept it from being completely awkward by using something I learned from my Book of Mormon teacher last semester. One of my favorite lectures of his was how God sees all things in the present, even though temporally it seems to be divided into past, present, and future for us. He talked about Mormon compiling a second set of records for a purpose that he did not know, and the purpose was that Martin Harris would lose the 116 pages of the Book of Lehi that contained important doctrine for the Lord's people in the last days. The professor did an amazing job of demonstrating how the Lord can move through time just as easily and deliberately as we can move through space. One thing I learned from this is that we should never doubt things that don't make sense to us, even if they are never even reconciled in our lifetime. Think about Mormon. He was commanded to make a second set of plates, and the reason for that (for us, at least) would not come to pass for thousands of years! Another thing that is made possible by the Lord's ability to see all things as one is that cause and effect can be completely inverted. Think about it. Martin Harris's losing the 116 pages was the cause, which came about 1500 years after the effect: Mormon compiling a second set of records. I don't see how there's any room for doubt about the fact that the Lord's ways are higher than ours, because we don't exactly have the ability to see all things in the present, much less change them. We as God's children must learn to accept all things that happen to us, however unfair or confusing they may seem, because even though we may never find the reason for it in this life, there is ALWAYS a reason, and learning to align our will with God's is just one of the things that we can do to show our love to Him.

The most enlightening TV Series ever made

I have recently finished watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" TV series on Youtube (here: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=92A4742FE9A6AA8C). It's mainly about astronomy and the planets and such, but there's so much more. Sagan begins by outlining a history of astronomy and how the discipline came to be studied and expanded. Eventually the series comes to address our place in the cosmos and how the human race plays a role in everything around us. It is a masterful fusion of science and art blended into one profound experience. I urge you all to watch it as it is universally applicable (literally) and contains one of the most passionate and dedicated scientists ever to walk this earth. I love science, and I love how Carl Sagan is able to explain it in a way that is both understandable for laymen and contemplative for the elite. I truly believe he was inspired to have an insatiable curiosity for the cosmos and how the universe really worked, and had the dedication to follow after that passion until the day he died.

Stating the obvious...because we all should sometimes

I really can't believe I've been fooled with this so long, so I'm putting this up in hopes of those who read it to see past the deception. C.S. Lewis, in his book The Screwtape Letters as the voice of senior devil Screwtape, explains that followers of the devil gain much more success from keeping things out than from putting things in, and I see the truth of that statement now as I have previously been a victim of this tactic. Although it's always been something that I've known, I have allowed myself to have been kept from the knowledge that we are definitely not put on this earth just to prove our righteousness to the Lord. Granted, that is a large part of our earth life and very important, but it will never be the only part of our mission (especially as we get closer and closer to the last days). We truly are part of the generation that has been held back for the final battle, the penultimate players in the great war for our souls. Because of this, we have an everlasting responsibility to ensure salvation not only for ourselves, but for the people in this world who did not have the opportunity to grow up in the Gospel. And in many cases, we are failing, myself included. I've gotten so caught up in being righteous just for the sake of being righteous that I've forgotten what I was supposed to be doing along with that. I believe that it's much easier for the devil to keep one righteous soul from converting others than to actually corrupt and defile that one. Satan knows that many of God's children on the earth today are so strong and pure that he is wasting his energy trying to bring them down. I'm not saying that we are immune to Satan's deceptions, but I believe that his efforts are much more effectively spent keeping these righteous people from sharing the Gospel with others. Why try to defile one steadfast child of God when it would be so much easier to keep thousands of others in darkness? It would be much more proprietary for Satan to tempt us to be idle (and oh, how simple that can be) so that we never get around to fulfilling our divine mission. It makes sense that Satan would try to get the children of God to be righteous, but be too afraid to tell anybody of their church. The problem is that the devil has convinced us that righteousness is limited to abstaining from conscious sin and what we believe to be "wrong", and those who fall under this deception (myself included) forget that a large part of righteousness is actually doing right! For the most part, people like me are fairly adept at not doing the things we know we shouldn't do, but that's only half the battle. The biggest flaw in my life is not that I'm doing too much wrong, it's that I'm not doing nearly enough right. The adversary has convinced me to be idle and passive enough to neglect temple work when I live a mere five minutes from the nearest temple, shun service when the opportunities are nearly forcing themselves upon me (especially here at BYU), and shy away from missionary work when I should be seeing and jumping at the chance of sharing this beautiful gospel with another. I hate that I was so stupid to be fooled like that! I used to wonder why parents could be punished for the sins of their children if they neglected to teach them, or why idle missionaries are blamed for the wrongs of the people that they could have converted if they had only tried, but it's so obvious now. Our potential consists of so much more than just going to earth, keeping the commandments, and leaving. It's as if the Lord was staring me straight in the face and saying, "You could have brought hundreds, no, thousands of My beloved sons and daughters back into the fold and you just sat back and did NOTHING?!?! Have you no regard at all for your brothers and sisters? Why have you failed Me?" And, of course, I will have nothing to say because I know it is all true. I don't want to be the person that the Lord has to chastise because I could have done more, so much more. I don't want to stand face to face with the person I kept seeing lonely on the sidewalk but did nothing and hear them weep because I was too busy with other things to show them how beautiful and true the Book of Mormon is. I don't want to stand at the judgement bar and hear the question, "Did you do your very best?" and have to hang my head in shame because I know that I didn't do half of what I could have. I could not handle the guilt. I'm only glad that I realized this deception this late in the game, because if I never had found this out, I shudder to think of what might happen to me and to so many innocent others. But it's over now. I can no longer say that I didn't know my responsibility; and, indeed, I shouldn't have been able to back then. I know my mission, and the only thing left to do now is to pursue it until the great Jehovah shall say, "The work is done."