Sunday thoughts

I didn't write in my journal for a year. I'm thankful, now, because I really wasn't in a place that I'd like the generations to find themselves reading about. My head just wasn't screwed on right. I started writing last November, when I had my 'coming to Christ' moment. My green Mickey Mouse journal goes from June 2011 to June 2012, the only entry I wrote during my 'dark period.' Then it kicks up in November. At this same time I began reading the Book of Mormon because, well, as the kind diligent Mormon I am, I never have. A few verses in a stumbled upon a verse I very much adored. You have to know me, if you don't by now: I love words. Words, words, words are of highest priority. I love music for the words, I love writing for the words, I love humor for the words. They're my kinfolk and confidants. "And I know that the record which I make is true; and I make it with mine own hand; and I make it according to my knowledge." -1 Nephi 1:3 More than that, I only know what I know. And as I said in that short musing that got published in Weber State's undergrad book Metaphor (paraphrased because I'm lazy): Words are the only means I have to communicate visually to the outside world what I see in my head. I wrote the above verse in the front of my journal. It just...it fit, you know? I know that the record which I make is true, and I make it with my own hand, according to my knowledge. Nephi later says he doesn't know everything, but he knows enough. All I have to give is all I have. It's not everything; it's enough. I filled that journal quite quickly, and started a new one February. I find it funny that three years span the first half of my Mickey Mouse journal, and three months fill the second. I randomly opened the Book of Mormon one night, and found another verse to put at the forefront of this new journal, and it's this one that inclined me to type this blog post: "Now in this thing we do rejoice; and we labor diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents. "For, for this intent have we written these things, that they may know that we knew of Christ, and we had a hope of his glory..." -Jacob 4:3-4 I want it to be that way with everything. With who I am, with what I saw, with what I write, with what I emit. That they may know that I know of Christ, and have a hope of his glory. Maybe it's powerful to me because it explicitly speaks about writing. maybe it's one of those things that don't connect with everyone the same way, but I just knew I felt something just now, and that I had twenty minutes until church started so why not share it. I want to live my life with the gospel on my sleeve as openly as my heart is. I'm so constantly in a state of readiness to hand my heart over; I should be the same with my testimony.

The Wait

At some point in December I found myself facing this fortune:

For that time to this, the thing that keeps standing out to me is patience. Waiting. That's my answer.

So in the intervening months I've stumbled upon a few scriptures that really hit this point home. Upon hearing another in church today, I decided to do this; to expand the list from the margin of my rainbow marked verses onto the internet.

So here it goes:

Romans 8:25 (pictured above) started it all; it was November, I'd just fallen back into the pattern of daily scripture study, and...it set the precedent for what my life would shortly become: an exercise in patience. The Wait.

Mosiah 24:15   "...and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord."

Matt 6:34 (pictured above) touches on the whole patience thing, so I'm including it. I found it at this same point of my life, okay?

Doctrine and Covenants 45:62   "For verily I say unto you, that great things await you."

Hebrews 10:36   "For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise."

And then we'll glance back at the verse I've had logged away since junior high, Philipians 4:11   "Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."