My husband and I are old timers. We are in our late 70s and have been actively attending church all our lives. We have made it through so many stages of life. We were teens just finding ourselves. We were young marrieds dealing with jobs, babies, and never enough time or energy. We raised teens and learned how little we knew. We have been divorced with all it's challenges. And we have been married now for 20 years during which we have gotten to know each other's families, have served three missions, been involved in a church welfare program that changed our views about poverty in dramatic ways. Always changing. Always learning new things. Always reminded how much we know and how little we know. Life evolves and needs change.
Come Follow Me was designed to help us and our families have meaningful Gospel discussions. It models a way of studying the scriptures where you don't just read to read. We are asked to read and look for things that stand out as we read. Why do those passages catch our attention? What is this scriptures saying to me?
The written text of the Come Follow Me guide gives us that model. The model is what is essential. The specific questions in that guide are not.
I learned a long time ago that I can read the scriptures over and over and new passages suddenly stand out. Why did I never see that before? Why? Because my life had changed. My challenges were new and different than before.
So what I am sharing here as I journal my thoughts may not be the same things that you will find and journal. That does not matter. What matters is that when we read the scriptures, we let them speak to us where we are in our lives. And we want our children to know that we are finding here answers to our own personal searches. This is especially critical as your children grow up. They want to know how the scriptures have meaning for them and the world they live in. We want the scriptures to guide us as families into meaningful discussions that will help us see the value of spending daily time in these books.
So as I begin this blog, I am 5 months into our 2020 study of the Book of Mormon. I will go back and add some thoughts from the previous chapters at a later date.
