Looks at Alma 13 With a Different Lens

Alma 13 begins (v1): “I would cite your minds forward to the time when the Lord God gave these commandments unto his children.”

Forward? Why do I not remember chewing on this before?

Alma is speaking around 82 B.C., but he is taking his listeners back to the foundation of the world—to the time when God was preparing His children and calling some according to His foreknowledge. He is teaching them to see history from God's perspective rather than simply from their own place in it.

And that gave me a strange thought.

During the sacrament, I often think about the Second Coming. I wonder: It’s going to happen. Where will I be? What will I be doing? What will be happening around me?

Okay, that may be a little silly. I do tend to obsess.

But Alma made me think about it differently. From God's perspective, the Second Coming isn't an uncertain possibility. It is part of His plan. He knows how this story ends even though I don't. We don’t.

And then I realized that Alma was giving these people a glimpse into our premortal existence.

The priests he describes were “called and prepared from the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God.” They were given the opportunity to choose good or evil, and those who chose good were prepared for a holy calling.

This morning, I read these verses as being about God's knowledge of His children. Me. Us!

He knew us before we came here.

And that thought became very personal.

He knew I would wander. He knew it would be for a short time. He knew I would eventually return with a stronger testimony and a greater desire to share it. He knew I would pursue music and that it would become one of the ways I could serve.

He knew I would have children who would wander, too.

And perhaps that is one reason I have become less inclined to condemn people for their poor choices. He knew them, too.

I believe there are blessings I might have enjoyed had I not wandered. I don't believe I had a hard heart, but I do believe I suffered from spiritual blindness. I could walk the walk and even talk the talk, but when I left the security of my home and family, I didn't know how to stand strong against temptations I had never known existed. I was a people pleaser, and had not learned how to discern.

That is the sad part of my story.

But I don't regret it.

Because I know more about the Savior now. I know more about repentance, mercy, and how well God knows His children – each of us!

Alma then tells us how we enter into the “rest of the Lord”: we humble ourselves, repent, bring forth fruit meet for repentence, exercise faith in Jesus Christ, and continue in the covenant path.

Joseph F. Smith described that rest this way:

“It means entering into the knowledge and love of God, having faith in His purpose and in His plan, to such an extent that we know we are right, and that we are not hunting for something else. We are not disturbed by every wind of doctrine.”

I find tremendous comfort in that.

The Lord has a plan.

I don't need to know exactly what it is, though I admit it would sometimes be nice. I only need enough faith to trust that He does.

And Alma ends with a list of qualities that will help us get there—and you know I love a list:

Humble.
Watch and pray continually.
Meek.
Submissive.
Patient.
Full of love.
Long-suffering.

I started this morning excited because I thought I had discovered something new in Alma 13.

What I really discovered was something I already knew—but needed to see from a different lens:

God knows the beginning.
He knows the end.
And He knows everything in between.

Including me. Including you!

I think I can rest in that.