I have enough bad habits to make me really appreciate when I have a good one. One of my most rewarding habits is the daily reading of the scriptures. I started the habit when I was 12 or 14 years old and heard this story by Spencer W. Kimball:
“Let me tell you of one of the goals that I made when I was still but a lad. When I heard a Church leader from Salt Lake City tell us at conference that we should read the scriptures, and I recognized that I had never read the Bible, that very night at the conclusion of that very sermon I walked to my home a block away and climbed up in my little attic room in the top of the house and lighted a little coal-oil lamp that was on the little table, and I read the first chapters of Genesis. A year later I closed the Bible, having read every chapter in that big and glorious book.
“I found that this Bible that I was reading had in it 66 books, and then I was nearly dissuaded when I found that it had in it 1,189 chapters, and then I also found that it had 1,519 pages. It was formidable, but I knew if others did it that I could do it.
“I found that there were certain parts that were hard for a 14-year-old boy to understand. There were some pages that were not especially interesting to me, but when I had read the 66 books and 1,189 chapters and 1,519 pages, I had a glowing satisfaction that I had made a goal and that I had achieved it.
“Now I am not telling you this story to boast; I am merely using this as an example to say that if I could do it by coal-oil light, you can do it by electric light. I have always been glad I read the Bible from cover to cover.” (Ensign, May 1974, 88)
Like President Kimball there have been pages that weren’t always interesting or easy to understand, but “I have always been glad I read the Bible from cover to cover.” Also like President Kimball, I don't share this to boast, but just to say that I'm really grateful for what the scriptures have provided to me through the years. They continue to guide, correct, inspire, and comfort me, and provide a standard of truth against which to measure philosophies, teachings, governing’s, and ideas.
Here is a Mormon Message about William Tyndale, the man who translated the Bible into the English language, and the importance reading the scriptures. I especially liked this line in it, “our need for constant recourse to the scriptures is greater than in any previous time.” I think people concerned about our day will agree with that.
1 comment:
I loved that Mormon message. I hadn't seen it before. Made me wonder what I would have thought or done in that prison for the year and a half of isolation. I hope I would have been good.
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