Today’s reading is Mosiah 24.
Perhaps the most important take-away from it is the lesson that the Lord doesn’t always immediately lift our burdens from us. Often, though, as in this instance, he “eases” them for us — sometimes by increasing our capacity to bear them.
I’m reminded of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s observation, in his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning, based upon his experience as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps at Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, that those who continued to see meaning and purpose in life survived, while those who didn’t, even if they seemed physically stronger, tended to die earlier.
But let’s not spend any more time on that important stuff about meaning and gracious divine assistance. I offer, instead, two very trivial notes:
1) Once again, in 23:2, we see a reference to a higher king and subordinate kings, just as we’ve noticed in other recent chapters.
2) The shallowness of the religious commitment of King Noah’s former priests is clearly shown, first, by their failure to teach anything about religion or scriptural law when they were given the charge to teach (as shown in 24:4-5) and, second, by Amulon’s eventual prohibition of prayer (24:11). Their spiritual commitment was probably always shallow; it was, for them, all about power, status, and riches.
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