Sweatpants and jeans
This week was pretty good!! We had three
conferences in a row this week, with MLC, Zone Conference, and a
conference for the brand new missionaries (aka my comp) so we had the
pleasure of being fed very well by our dear mission president.
Spiritually and food wise. Fue genial. Well, with all those conferences,
plus having to walk an hour there and back to get to said conferences
every day, our time to work was a little more limited this week. But we
still got some solid work done, met some really weird people in the
street, met some really cool people in the street, had a some members
get mad at us for not showing up to a lesson that we never scheduled
with them, and then extra mad when we showed up the next day at the time
we then scheduled a lesson. That's about all I can remember. Here's my
shpiritual shpeel.
Yall
remember that story in the Book of Mormon where Nephi and his brothers
are trying their best to get God's word from the bad evil dude and
they're failing? So instead of pulling out a whiteboard and
brainstorming, Laman and Lemuel find some rather decent sized sticks on
the ground and start smacking their brothers left and right in a cave?
Super random, but it is what it is. Well, right then, and angel shows up
right? And in my rough translation skills says "yo. Quit that. Your
brother literally is following God. Do better." What a guy, we love this
angel. But Nephi's wording is really super interesting here. In every
account I've read of an angel coming it says something like "the angel
appeared unto them, and he descended as it were in a cloud" or "I
discovered a light appearing... when immediately a personage appeared"
or "they saw the heavens open, and they saw angels descending out of
heaven as it were in the midst of fire". There's a bunch more but you
get the point. Angels like to make a good first impression. A grand
entrance if you will. Well, I don't know if Nephi was just trying to
play it cool, but Nephi describes the entrance of this angel as "and
angel of the Lord came and stood before them" and then he says "and
after the angel had spoken unto us, he departed". Seems like "he came"
and "he departed" don't quite match up with all the other angels who
came and the heavens opened and pillars of light appeared and there were
midsts of fires.
Además, Laman and Lemuel, literally
two and a half seconds after this angel departed, started complaining,
and later they say "[Nephi] says that the Lord has talked with him, and
also that angels has ministered unto him. But behold, we know that he
lies unto us." Bro. What? You'd think, for two men who were most
assuredly present for this "ministering of angels", they wouldn't be
saying that right?
Well here's my proposition (that is most definitely not doctrine but it's just what I think).
This
angel that "came" that day in the cave, was just a normal guy. At least
appearance-wise. He showed up walking, and he let these brothers know
what God wanted them to know. Who he was and where he came from? I don't
know.
But Nephi, full of the spirit, was able to
recognize that this angel was sent from God, and the message he brought
was from Him as well. And Laman and Lemuel, lacking a little bit of that
spirit, didn't recognize that. Thought he was just some dude who
happened to be walking past that cave and decided to tell them what to
do.
How many times does that happen to us? How
many times do angels show up to us and we don't recognize them? How
often are we praying for an angel to appear in front of us, and that
week someone talks in church about exactly what we needed to hear? How
often does someone pass by us, complimenting our shirt? How often does
someone send us a text, Doordarsh us a cookie, write us a note? I'm sure
God finds a lot of joy in opening the heavens and sending multitudes of
angels. But I think he finds just as much joy in sending us angels
wearing sweatpants.
Let's all look a little harder
(with spiritual eyes of course) for our angels in sweatpants. And
maybe, just maybe, we should put on our favorite pair of sweatpants and
be that angel for someone else.
Cause who knows,
maybe in someone's diary in 2623 years, someone will read a story about
an angel who "came", shared a message and some cookies, and "departed".
And that angel could be you.
Anyway I love you all!! See you next week!!
-hermana allen
