Monday 26Jan09 – Alma 44 – I don’t have anything penetrating to say about this chapter, except to marvel at how far making a promise has fallen. Even the ‘bad guys’ in this chapter didn’t want to make a promise that they knew that they would break. These days, most promises aren’t even worth the breath that it takes to make them, and thus are easily broken. But a promise/covenant is a promise, and even if we swear unthinkingly or don’t mean it, we are still held responsible for our actions concerning that covenant. And if we lie when we make that promise, the worse off it is for us.

   Mosiah 11.23 – ‘Yea, and it shall come to pass that except this [person] repents and turns unto the Lord God, they shall be brought into bondage; and none shall deliver them, except it be the Lord the Almighty God.’ Straight talk from Abinadi, isn’t it? It’s obvious that the longer someone/I denies the addictions that trouble me/them, the further they enslave themselves to the Devil. A lifetime of habits are not easy to break, nor is it easy to break a method/pattern of thinking. But, perhaps most debilitating and catastrophic, is the lack of self-honesty that is commonly associated with sin. I know that I have, on many occasions, rationalized my behaviors, saying that what I was doing wasn’t ‘so bad’ as other things I could have been doing. Either that and/or just glossing over any weaknesses we may have and saying ‘Nah, that doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have that problem and I won’t ever have it.’ Any sin, whether it is a huge, horrible nightmare, or a small, white omission, keeps a person as far from Heaven as does the other. There are no such things as ‘small’ sins. True, some are easier to repent of, but even the small ones have a way of accumulating, and further fostering a habit of lying. And remember, I’m pretty sure that I am held responsible for the lies I tell myself, since they are still lies.