Sermon: Scriptures

Dear brothers and sisters.

 

I really struggled with this talk for today, although I was given half a week to complete it, I Procrastinated. I admit it; I found numerous other things to do other than start on my talk and that included watching TV. So last night I sat at the table and though what can I do my talk on, I thought, how about procrastination? Nope I've done a talk on that before. I looked through the friend for inspiration, none came. Matthew came down and said just read something from one of your books; I said nope cant do that as I told Levi that he had to write his from scratch. I thought how about Levis chores that we chose, how we wanted to keep his mind, body and spirit active during the holidays, nope to boring. I'll have a look at the personal progress online for some more ideas for Levis chore list, which was me procrastinating again. Do you know they have changed it so much, there used to be 'find and name a certain number of constellations' 'learn how to tell the time using the sun' and so on, now its boring, I cant think of another word for it, they want the women to learn homemaking skills, how to clean the house properly, how to clean clothes properly, to write about our feelings with regards to certain scriptures and to memorise hymns... so obviously I wont be using that for too much inspiration for levis chore list.

 

So in the end I came back to one of my first thoughts, its not one I mentioned before.

 

Pokémon Go...

 

There are so many people outside at this very moment with their phones in their hands looking up, looking down, looking left, looking right and missing the whole world around them, their aim is to catch Pokémon and train them. Imagine if they had to catch or find scripture characters and complete a task for them instead, would the game be as great, no, not because it would be boring because it wouldn't be, anything can be made exciting if you advertise it right but it wouldn't be as great because of that one word 'scriptures', scriptures mean God, scriptures mean rules, scriptures mean loads of text that is sometimes difficult to understand.

 

I read a book recently and it took me two days to complete it from start to end but I struggle to read the scriptures, on a Sunday during Sunday school I am fine but during the week on my own, I really struggle, to be honest I don't even think about them, I've lost count how many times I've read 1st Nephi.

 

But Heavenly Father never said that he wanted us to read it all in a few days or even a few weeks, he didn't say that we had to start at first Nephi, although it is a good starting point, what he did tell us was to search, ponder and pray. If we have to read the same verse 5 times over before we understand it then we have to read it 5 times over. Instead of saying to ourselves I'll read a chapter a day or 10 verses a day instead we should say that we are going to read for 30 minutes a day, if that means that we've only read 2 verses in that 30 minutes then so be it. I remember when I was little and my mum was even more busy than she usually is, she used to read her scriptures whilst eating breakfast, 10 minutes, but that 10 minutes she was not only nourishing her body but also her soul.

 

I am going to task you all to read 5 minutes of scriptures per day and try to build it up so that by the time you get to the end of august you are reading 30 minutes of scriptures per day. I am. Let's give Pokémon Go a run for its money.

 

I leave these words with you in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

 

Sister Vicki Gill