Hooray for the Truth!

I'm still alive! Besides the bathroom remodeling it is the end of the semester and yesterday I taught three classes and graded over 150 student journals. It is a fun thing to do because most of the students write things that are interesting to read, but it is also a tedious thing to grade that many journals in one day. But I got it done in record time! I went to work yesterday at 6:30 a.m. and came home at 9:00 p.m. It was dark when I left home and dark when I returned home, but I know that somewhere in between those dark walks to and from the car there was sunshine. (My office has no windows!)

I've been so busy, but have been waiting excitedly to share a scripture with you. It is a verse that talks about the Pit of Illusion which the Book of Mormon calls vain imaginations. (See 1 Nephi 12:18 and Roman 1:21.) This verse is found in Helaman 16:22;

"And many more things did the people imagine up in their hearts, which were foolish and vain; and they were much disturbed, for Satan did stir them up to do iniquity continually; yea, he did go about spreading rumors and contentions upon all the face of the land, that he might harden the hearts of the people against that which was good and agaisnt that which should come."

That pretty well sums up the opposite of Living in Truth and what it means to live in the Pit of Illusion. It is foolish and vain and people who dwell in the Pit are disturbed, or as I call it vexed, all of the time.

I might be busy, but today I'm celebrating the fact that I don't have to dwell in the Pit of Illusion. I know how to Live in Truth! Three cheers for Truth!

Pride and the Pit

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach a New Testament class at 8:00 a.m. in the morning. This morning on my way to work I just kept thinking about how blessed I am to be able to start the day discussing the birth of Jesus Christ. It just doesn’t get any better than that!

I’ve taught this many times and I’ve read it and studied it every Christmas and more times in between, but this morning (very early!) as I was preparing I saw something that relates to Living in Truth that I had never noticed before. 

When Mary visits Elizabeth, Elizabeth greets her with a salutation of love and an acknowledgement that the child Mary is carrying will be the Savior of the world. In response Mary praises God in a psalm or canticle called the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). In the middle of this canticle Mary says, “[God] hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”

What hit me today is that “the imagination of their hearts” is the Pit of Illusion, and being in the Pit of Illusion is a form of pride. There are many reasons we fall into the Pit, but all of them go back to the fact of pride. For example, instead of trusting that God knows what is best for us and will guide us, we worry, fear, and fret about what “should be.” That is pride and it is vain imaginations of the heart and what being scattered is to be separated from God.

The moral of the story? Trust in God and Live in Truth!