Finished Reading the Book of Mormon


I guess that I am some what a religious person, but that being said, I am also Mormon which most people know.  I guess I do not hide it very well.  But today I have to announce that I finished reading the Book of Mormon.  You are saying big deal, right.  Well, it is for me, because I have not read it in almost 24 years.

This major piece of my churches cannon, I have not read it in such a long time. The reason is pretty simple, laziness.  I did not see any reason for it.  I am not a reader as it is anyway.  But for me, it was like, why read something that I have been reading since seminary and my mission.  I was not taken a break from it, but just did not see the point.  I knew what it said, I believe it, and I knew I would be called in at church to read selected verses from it from time to time, and that is all I needed.

It is amazing that as I read, how the things I was reading, applied to what I was learning in Sunday school class.  I know that sounds funny, but that was what was happening to me.  I would be talking to someone about the church and I could apply what I had just read into our conversation. And I was able to apply it to helping in teaching others.

As I as reading the second to the last book in the Book of Mormon, Ether, I tried to focus on the people of this book, the Jaredites.  But as I found, it was chapter after chapter of them falling way and then coming back.  At one point I was thinking of what some people say Mark Twain thought about the Book of Ether, "That it was a proper name for the book."  But as I came to the end, and the Writer is talking about the last war in the book, that 4 million were killed in battle.  A whole civilization was wiped out.  And all we have of them is 15 chapters.

So what is next.  Well I have been challenged to continue to read the Book of Mormon.  But I think I will start on something small next, like the Pearl of Great Price.  Then I will move onto the Bible.  There might be some research that I might do that I had done in one of my Book of Mormons before, until it was stolen.  So to do that research again could be fun.  But I will continue to read.

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