So behind

8-18-2018

I’m SO BEHIND. If I didn’t feel Heavenly Father wants me to keep all four of these Summer Classes plus my 32-hour-week employment, I’d sure drop something. I’m doing my best and falling behind. I’m not really happy about it either. I have been working hard at being obedient to the Spirit – and frankly, having more success than usual – and so my Becoming Project is coming along nicely. But my GPA is going into the tank. I’m sorry I don’t have more time to tell you about it. I guess I can draw some parallels from our reading this week.

The Israelites went through a lot of things in their time in the wilderness. There were periods of obedience and disobedience, with corresponding happiness and misery. One thing that struck me from this week’s reading was that in the multitude of rules that the Lord gave to the Israelites through Moses, in that setting that began several millenia of distinctive existence for the Israelite nation, the Lord was trying to create a culture of obedience, with the long-long-long-term effects in mind, purifying the habits that had kept these people down for so long. These were people who had spent 400 years in slavery and learned all kinds of inappropriate behaviors from their captors, not to mention weaknesses they had brought with them from Canaan – remember these are descendants of the people who threw Joseph into the pit. They had to change their very nature, to become proactive, self-aware, obedient AGENTS for the Lord - and not servile, cringing, oppressed OBJECTS of their own appetites. That seems to have been the whole purpose in it all. The Lord patiently taught them through the multitude of rules how people really SHOULD live, how free people really are and can become. He taught them in temporal as well as spiritual affairs, and wove among all those rules references to the very Son of God. The Lord instructed them that he would remove the Canaanite nations gradually, not all at once – because the struggle had meaning in developing their strength and capability. I suppose this is a good lesson for me to remember right now. The Lord is developing in me some better habits and understanding – and I am grateful. I just wish I did not have to let go of my academic standards to do it. But I will persist.