Book of Mormon: Day 261: Recognizing and Remembering

Today’s Reading:  3 Nephi 2

 And it came to pass that thus passed away the ninety and fifth year also, and the people began to forget those signs and wonders which they had heard, and began to be less and less astonished at a sign or a wonder from heaven, insomuch that they began to be hard in their hearts, and blind in their minds, and began to disbelieve all which they had heard and seen—

 Imagining up some vain thing in their hearts, that it was wrought by men and by the power of the devil, to lead away and deceive the hearts of the people; and thus did Satan get possession of the hearts of the people again, insomuch that he did blind their eyes and lead them away to believe that the doctrine of Christ was a foolish and a vain thing.

I’m at the age in life when I’ve started to worry about remembering things.  No, I’m not a senior citizen yet, but because my maternal grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease before she passed away, I’m constantly on the lookout for early-onset symptoms in myself.  What WAS the name of that Indian restaurant in San Francisco?  Where DID I put my car keys?  Why CAN’T I remember the name of his boss?  If I don’t develop a memory disorder, I might just drive myself crazy with the WORRY of developing one instead.

In the eternal scheme of things, the only kind of memory loss I need concern myself with is one that we might call “spiritual amnesia.”  Spiritual amnesia occurs when we fail to recognize, value, or remember the times when the Lord has intervened in our lives.  All of us have spiritual experiences–some dramatic (like an immediate, unexplained healing) and some more ordinary (like the feeling we get when we listen to our child pray sincerely for the first time)–but many of us forget those experiences or at the very least, downplay them in our memories.  Yes, we were undeniably touched by the experience, but with the passage of time, we might begin to believe that our feelings came from another source, perhaps from our sentimentality or from an overeagerness to be like the “really spiritual” people we know.  Maybe we simply invented the feelings so that we wouldn’t feel so alone in this world.

The truth is that every time we feel God’s influence in our lives, we can be sure that Satan and his minions will do everything in their power to diminish what we experienced, to make us feel that it wasn’t what we thought it was.  The best way to defend ourselves against this tendency is to record what we experienced and how we felt when we experienced it at the time that it happens.

In his October 2007 General Conference address entitled “O Remember, Remember,” President Henry B. Eyring taught us about this process.  Prompted by the Holy Ghost on a particularly tiring day, Pres. Eyring began to keep a record of how God had blessed him and his family that day and on all the days that followed:

I wrote down a few lines every day for years. I never missed a day no matter how tired I was or how early I would have to start the next day. Before I would write, I would ponder this question: “Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?” As I kept at it, something began to happen. As I would cast my mind over the day, I would see evidence of what God had done for one of us that I had not recognized in the busy moments of the day. As that happened, and it happened often, I realized that trying to remember had allowed God to show me what He had done.  More than gratitude began to grow in my heart. Testimony grew. I became ever more certain that our Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers. I felt more gratitude for the softening and refining that come because of the Atonement of the Savior Jesus Christ. And I grew more confident that the Holy Ghost can bring all things to our remembrance—even things we did not notice or pay attention to when they happened.[1]

Have you seen the hand of God reaching out to touch you today?

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