Small price to pay

Alma 23 & 24

It's difficult to stop at one chapter some mornings. I love the story of Alma, the bondage they are in to the Lamanites, how their burdens were lightened because of the covenant they had made with the Lord and how they were delivered. Certainly their delivery was a miraculous event.

Can we all say that of our own delivery from bondage? I know I have felt the miracle of my own delivery every day of my life since. I guess the thing I find most interesting is that we aren't just “delivered”, but that we are changed. Our hearts are changed to want to do the Lord's will in all things. That single change brings on all the other changes and we have a desire to serve and sacrifice to repay (as if that were possible) the goodness of the Lord in our lives.

I have felt I owe my best self to the Lord for my own delivery from a life that was filled with darkness, where I was persecuted in my own home for my beliefs, where I was not allowed to pray, or to worship Heavenly Father. In a somewhat similar way as the people of Alma, I was required to support my task master, who really had a good thing going for him. It was miraculous to me. It took a great deal of effort to break that bondage. It wasn't just a marriage that held me bondage, however. I had developed habits that needed to be broken as well. In some ways, this might have been just as difficult as changing my physical location and marital status, because these bad habits had become who I was at the time. And it was these habits that, bit by bit, had to be replaced by good ones. It is a process and there is no shortcut. But I testify that the Lord keeps his covenants, and as I worked to overcome my bad habits that kept me from being who I really am, I was blessed beyond any of my imaginations.

Why is the Lord so merciful in delivering us from bondage, and what did he expect from Alma and his people because of this mercy? What does he expect from me? The answer to that question is in Mosiah 24:14 - “. . .that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.” A small price to pay in my opinion and in doing so brings me joy.