May Christ Lift Thee Up Moroni 7-9

Faith, hope and charity.

I read an article as part of my weekly study this week about these three topics and how they are the three most important things in the world. This lesson, May Christ Lift Thee Up, has had great meaning to me this week, and has caused me to stop and examine my life a little more than normal in order to see where I really stand.

The world we are living in now really does require a lot of self examination. And as I contemplated the world I'm living in now, I started think about the world that Moroni was living in.

Completely alone, wandering, having watched his father be murdered and all of his people are gone. Surely he knew that his earthly life had little left to offer him. How easy it would have been to become hopeless in those circumstances.

Yet instead, he recognizes that the Lord has called him to do an important work, and he continues to labor at it.

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It's time to get ready to start the Doctrine and Covenants next year! Check out the Doctrine and Covenants Journal or the D&C Study Companion for kids! There is also a new Doctrine and Covenants Journal for Young Women that includes a Goal planner for 2021!

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What am I hoping for?

Jeffrey R. Holland, in his book Christ and the New Covenant (which, by the way, is excellent) shares this message about the relationship between faith and hope:

It is certainly much more than wishful thinking. It is to have 'hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of His resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise'. That is the theological meaning of hope in the faith-hope-charity sequence. With an eye to that meaning, Moroni 7:42 then clearly reads, 'If a man have faith [in Christ and his atonement] he must needs [as a consequence] have hope [in the promise of the Resurrection, because the two are inextricably linked]; for without faith [in Christ's atonement] there cannot be any hope [in the resurrection].

I was thinking about this quote in regards to my own hopeful thoughts lately. I think I tend to hope for things to go back to the way they were. Or I have faith that everything will "work out" according to my own definition of how I want them to. It's very possible that those things are not in the cards.

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Miss a week's blog post or want to review a weekly lesson? Find blog posts from past lessons with study help links here: Come Follow Me Lesson Helps

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How should I respond to challenges and despair?

The letter that Mormon wrote to his son has a beautiful message meant for all of us. After what Mormon had been through himself, I'm sure he knew that the life that Moroni was facing after he was gone would be difficult.

From every lesson, I like to pull one or two scriptures to add to my collection of verses that I find meaningful, and from this lesson, I chose Mormon's parting words at the end of Chapter 9:

My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death, but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing of his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life rest in your mind forever.

And may the grace of God the Father, whose throne is high in the heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of his power, until all things shall become subject until him, be, and abide with you forever. Amen

Clearly, the lesson I needed to learn this week is that I need to set my faith and hope on eternal things, because that truly is the ultimate goal.

This week's challenge cards

I have to apologize for missing last week and not having the links and challenge cards available for those that find them helpful. I had NO INTERNET for roughly four days, and it's quite amazing how reliant I am on my internet provider...

Happily it's back up, but by the time I got it working it was just too late to go back and do anything for last week.

But this week's lesson has some great helps! One of these is the article I referenced at the beginning of this post, which is a talk from BYU Speeches. It is kind of long, but it's fabulous, so I hope you'll take some time to read it in addition to your regular study this week.

Have a great week of study! I can't believe we are up to the last chapter of the Book of Mormon next week!