Alma 9-10 — How Have Ye Forgotten?

Alma asks the people of Ammonihah a haunting question:

“How have ye forgotten the tradition of your fathers?” (Alma 9:8)

I find myself asking that same question about some of my wandering children. How could you possibly forget the peace and joy that existed in the home where you were taught? How can you walk away from the blessings and protection of the gospel—and then deprive your own precious children of those same blessings?

And then I had to turn the question around.

How did I forget?

Because I did.

I think I found one piece of what I didn’t like as I grew up and magnified it until I could no longer see the blessings or the truth I was being taught. Little-girl misunderstandings became assumptions, and assumptions became my version of truth.

It wasn’t until many years of stumbling in the dark and then being led out of it that I realized what an enchanted world I had been raised in. I had forgotten the blessings and protection my family had been given.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so astonished that someone can forget.

Amulek understood forgetting too. He said:

“I was called many times and I would not hear; therefore I knew concerning these things, yet I would not know.” (Alma 10:6)

What an interesting phrase: I knew, yet I would not know.

He hadn’t lost all knowledge of God. He simply wasn’t responding to what he knew. But the Lord kept calling him.

Perhaps that is where I find the hope in these chapters. Alma was sent to people who had forgotten. Amulek had once refused to hear. And I know from my own life that something forgotten can be remembered.

There is a song my brother-in-law sings called Have I Forgotten Thee? I can hear it in my mind as I write this. Its message comes from Isaiah:

“Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.”
—Isaiah 49:15–16

Maybe that is what I most needed from Alma 9 and 10 today.

I may look at someone I love and wonder, How have you forgotten Him?

But perhaps the more important truth is this:

He has not forgotten them.

I forgot once too. And while I was stumbling around in the dark, the Lord had not forgotten me. Eventually I turned toward Him and discovered He had been there all along.

I don’t know what will cause someone I love to remember.

But I do know this: while we are forgetting Him, He is still remembering us.