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.

What is a Testimony, Really?

The other day I was looking up the word "tabernacle" in the Bible Dictionary. It was basically a mobile temple used while the Children of Israel wandered 40 years on the wilderness before entering the promised land.


A lot of the description of the tabernacle had to do with the length of the poles that held up the fancy curtains and what kinds of wood were used in the construction. It was a condensed version of what it says in Deuteronomy.


I skimmed.


But then my eyes landed on this part that talks about what was kept in the holiest place of the tabernacle. It was the Ark of the Covenant.


Now, we've all heard of this thing, if we've watched Indiana Jones do his thing. And we've probably all heard the story of what happened to Uzziah when he reached up to steady it when the oxen tripped while dragging the ark. Zap. But what was really inside the ark (a.k.a., very nice wooden box)?


According to the scriptures, within the ark were the stone tablets upon which the finger of God had written the commandments when He gave them to Moses on Mount Sinai. The Israelites kept these in the most sacred place they had while living in camping conditions for decades: the ark.


But what stopped me cold was the alternate name for the ark: The Ark of the Testimony.


All of a sudden, this idea poured into my head, that a testimony is something where the hand of God has written something indelible--such as these plates of stone. And that my testimony is the collection of things that God has written upon the tables of my heart, never to be removed.


I do have a testimony. God's hand has written many things on my heart over the 40+ years I have been a sojourner on this earth. He can write better when my heart is fleshy than when it is stony. He can write more when I come to Him. He can write more when I humble myself and seek to share His love and search out the One.


It's incredible that each of us can have this writing on our souls. God is so good.