BOM Alma 38

I’ll highlight one passage from today’s reading, Alma 38:

“See that ye bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love” (38:12).

I heard Truman Madsen point out, many years ago (probably when I heard him lecture at Education Week down in California, while I was still in high school), that this verse doesn’t advise us to kill our passions off, but to bridle them.

When we bridle a horse, we do so to guide it, to steer it.  Not to shoot it.

In other words, our natural passions aren’t evil.  No more than a good horse is.  But they need to be managed, directed.

And Alma 38:12 is also striking for its promise that, if we manage, control, steer, channel our passions, we’ll be “filled with love.”  Not left cold and austere.  Not deprived of life.  Not bloodless and repressed.  Not terminally uncool.  Filled with love.

Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England