Yikes! Be Patient in Affliction...Or Else

When my kids are being little pills, my husband often hangs this nebulous threat over them, "Kids! You'd better stop it or RELSE." It's an aberration of the word else, obviously. The kids will sometimes ask, "What's relse this time?" And then he thinks up some random consequence to their bad behavior, and generally he gets results.


Smart dad, right?


But as I've been dealing with a negative situation over the past several months (years if I think about it), I have been trying to be patient with the, for lack of a better word, affliction. One day a couple of weeks ago, I was really digging into the Book of Mormon, looking for ways to help me handle things, and I came across a couple of verses that simultaneously comforted and scared me.


That's possible, right? Comforting and scaring? At the same time? Well, apparently it's possible.


Here's the verse from Alma chapter 34.

 40 And now my beloved brethren, I would exhort you to have patience, and that ye bear with all manner of afflictions; that ye do not revile against those who do cast you out because of your exceeding poverty, lest ye become sinners like unto them;

 41 But that ye have patience, and bear with those afflictions, with a firm hope that ye shall one day rest from all your afflictions.

Did you see that? There's  RELSE in there. A big one.

At first glance, the RELSE looks like "They're sinners and you're not because you're the afflicted one and therefore innocent and spotless." But I'm no dummy. I know I'm not some kind of perfect, sinless martyr. I've got challenges of my own in the way of spiritual growth.

No, I think the "warning relse" here is more specific. And maybe I'm just reading this wrong, but it sounds like "lest ye become sinners LIKE UNTO them." So, wait. Is that really saying that when I'm impatient through persecution, there's a good chance I'll become a cranky old persecutor just like the person I'm being impatient with through their infliction of affliction upon me?

Kinda what that sounds like.

So, yikes-a. Time to suck it up, quit my whining, and be patient through this trial, right? Because more than anything, I want to be kind and loving and ... not be out there heaping persecution on my brother's head.

So I'd better quit it...or RELSE.