A brief note on Alma 22:
As I pointed out a couple of days ago, forbearance and charity can have a huge impact on others. It’s so in this case, where Lamoni’s father, the high king, who had unsuccessfully sought to kill Ammon in Alma 20, is now open to the preaching of the Gospel. “I have been somewhat troubled in mind,” he says in 22:3, “because of the generosity and the greatness of the words of thy brother Ammon.”
Ammon’s kindly and forgiving treatment of him, which he absolutely had not earned, has furnished the opening.
But my favorite verse in this chapter, bar none — and one of my favorites in all of scripture — is the one (22:18) containing this phrase from the high king’s prayer: “I will give away all my sins,” the king tells God, “to know thee.”
I love that statement.
Are we willing, really willing, to give away all of our sins in order to know the Lord? Or, while generally willing, are there one or two small little sins that we really rather like and that we would rather hold on to for a while?
Another famous prayer is that of the young (future) St. Augustine: “O Lord, make me chaste. But not yet.”
It doesn’t really work.
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