Alma 7

I’ve been busy as a judge, yes. Court after court. Verdicts galore. But this is what I like best: speaking face to face with good people—or bad. Makes no difference, because God has one voice and one speech for all. And now we have a new chief judge, which lets me do this.

I hope you’re better than the Zarahemlans. They were a mess. But now—I won’t say it was because of my sermon to them—they’ve turned around.

I want to feel as happy about you as I do about them,

but without all the junk we had to wallow through to get to that point. I felt like I was wading through garbage to reach them. Good to pull them out of it, but I had to wallow like a pig in mud to get them scrubbed off.

So please tell me you’re not so quasi-atheistic as they were. Not so proud, no bowing to statues or machinery. Please tell me you bow down to the real God and believe in the Great Reconciliation Abinadi taught.

I could foretell future events. But only one matters: the coming of the Anointed One. And that’s soon—sorry I can’t be more specific, but that’s all God’s giving me right now.

I don’t think you or I will see him in the flesh, though I wouldn’t put anything past God. One thing for sure, though. We all have to make sure we’re straightening the road for him to get here, not bending it. We have to make sure he won’t have to end up dirtying himself from the visit. He will walk on water, God’s spirit says to me. But he won’t walk on mud.

A beautiful woman from Jerusalem territory—Lehi’s old stomping grounds—will be his mom. How? God can do anything when his cloud of hope surrounds you.

Prophets talked about him absorbing people’s misery, whether physical or psychological, emotional of social. Whether that’s vicarious, magical somehow, or just through empathy because of what people will put him through, I can’t say. But they will kill him, know that, which will give him the right to say “I was there. You have nothing on me. So, even though I’m God, trust me to understand.”

I’ve spoken elsewhere about people’s names being crossed out of the Good Shepherd’s list of lambs. But what God wants is to cross out the sins on the checklist of your lives.

That requires rebirth, new lives. There’s a moat in front of God’s kingdom. You can’t swim it to get in. You have to walk with Jesus across the surface. Before that, though, you need to wash in it. You need to be baptized in it. Then have the faith to let him take your hand and lead across it to the front door.

Or think of it this way: sin is a backpack. It’s heavy but there’s nothing inside it except cement. You’ve got to drop it before you go in the water. Otherwise, you’ll drown from the weight of it.

Think about the things God has said—the small carryall of mercies he gives us in the form of commandments. Keep those, live by them, and he’ll eventually say one more thing to you. A new commandment: be happy forever.

I can feel where you’re at. I’m preaching to the choir. I can see it in your faces. And that makes me happy. You’re already straightening Jesus’ road into the world.

It’s like someone already got to you—yes, I know who it was, God himself. You know his thoughts and intentions, none of which are secret, except to those who will them to be. He’s the definer of consistency in this world, not straight so much, if you’ll permit me to vary the metaphor, but a perfect circle. The straightest line will end, except in the abstractions of geometry, at which I was never very good. But a circle has no beginning or end. God is like that.

But realize too that he’s a person. He looks for housing inside us, collectively and individually. As God, of course, he’s got to have a clean space. Because, as the source of all light, he illuminates every inch, every corner. No spot escapes his sight. When he enters your lives, every speck shows. If you don’t clean up, he’ll walk away and the darkness of his absence will never let you see the dirt that remains. He won’t be back.

I guess you can see that, while you’re in basically good shape, none of us is spotless. We all have to dust, at least. Stay awake to that idea. Blame is as easy to catch as a cold. Stay away from carriers.

Since pride is probably your biggest potential vice, please focus on abandoning pretense. Give in to requests easily. Bear with unpleasantness as long as you can (unless you’re your own). Even so, don’t be afraid to ask God for favors. Most of the time, nothing makes him happier. Just be sure to thank him when he comes through.

I’ll add, though I shouldn’t need to, that you’ve got to keep searching for more faith, hope, and love. Those are the engines that propel good works. Don’t attempt the latter without the former.

I know it seems vague and hard to identify with, but God wants you all to be at a big feast, a family reunion, really, in which Abraham and all his descendants can pass the plates around while they talk about all they’ve come through. One topic: the divine laundry, where only blood can whiten our clothes. The right blood, that is, not that foul wartime fountain of gore that comes to us at our worst.

I hope I haven’t sounded rough. I don’t mean to. You make me happy with your attitude and actions. It’s like I came to the “Before” picture and saw that it was the “After” one. The change has happened before I started to work on it. Thank you.

And bless you, all of you, men, women, boys, girls, flocks, herds, even your buildings—if I could, I’d paint them with peace. You’ve earned it.

That’s all I’ve got to say except: Amen.