Smoothed and Structured

Here is my offering this day even though a struggle. Perhaps the Lord will help me make sense of it.

I’m reading Mosiah 21:35 and notice a note I once wrote in the margin: “Why are we baptized?” Ammon answers: baptism is a witness and testimony that we are willing to serve God with all our hearts.

What does that mean for me?

I am willing to serve the Lord. Yet lately I’ve been grappling with the idea of serving as an ordinance worker while also playing the organ in the temple. I feel willing — but doing it without Clyde beside me is not my favorite thing. Why? Because I know I’ll be taught. I’ll grow. And when I’m stretching spiritually while my eternal companion is focused elsewhere (not on bad things — just different things), I feel the gap. We aren’t always on the same page. I’m still chewing on that.

Verse 36 brought further reflection. Perhaps following this nudge to serve four hours weekly in the temple might get us “off this square.” We seem to have stalled in our growth. Isn’t that, in a way, a kind of bondage? Shouldn’t we be moving forward in progression — learning, growing, becoming?

Then my Old Testament study this week came to mind — Eve choosing to partake of the fruit so that forward movement could begin. Perhaps sometimes one must step forward first.

Another margin note caught my eye: “We are not subjects to be acted upon. We have a voice, and we must learn to use it.”
(gulp)
Yes — I’m speaking to myself.

Then I turned to Leviticus 6–8. I’m trying hard to find Jesus in the Old Testament. The repetition of burnt offerings, grain offerings, sin offerings — the same act again and again — made me think of the sacrament. Week after week, we repeat a holy ordinance. Why? When we partake with full purpose, aren’t we hoping that the sins within us — the things that block our closeness to the Savior — might be burned away?

One phrase stopped me: “It is the Lord’s perpetual share and is to be burned completely.”
If I liken that to the sacrament, could it mean allowing the Lord to fully consume what is unworthy in me? I don’t claim certainty — only a parallel I’m pondering.

Other details confuse me — the priest not eating, the seven days at the entrance of the tent of meeting, obedience required “lest they die.” Hard things to relate to. But perhaps the lesson for me is simpler:

After renewing my covenants, I am to carry the love of God in my heart through the coming days — remembering His sacrifice — and striving to keep all His commandments.

Maybe that is what the God I worship is trying to teach me.

And maybe this nudge to serve is part of that lesson too.