Mormon

I’m amazed at the optimism of Mormon.  He wrote, “I have reason to bless my God and my Savior Jesus Christ, that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem… and that he hath given me and my people so much knowledge unto the salvation of our souls” (3 Nephi 5:20).  He wrote this at a time when the entire Nephite civilization was on the brink of destruction because of their wickedness.  But Mormon could see past the current events and understood God’s mercy: “Surely he hath blessed the house of Jacob, and hath been merciful unto the seed of Joseph” (3 Nephi 5:21).  In the words/letters that Moroni recorded of his father at the end of the Book of Mormon, Mormon spoke of “every good thing” such as God’s “infinite goodness and grace,” “the pure love of Christ,” “the grace of God the Father,” “hope and perfect love”, and the “power and great glory” of God (Moroni 8:3, 7:47, 9:26, 8:26, 7:35).  He spoke of these things amidst a “horrible scene” of a people “without civilization” who were filled with “awful brutality” (Moroni 9:11, 17, 20).  Throughout his life he had “an awful scene of blood and carnage… before [his] eyes” and yet he was able to be “filled with charity” and write of how God “inviteth and enticeth to do good continually” (Moroni 7:13).  How did he maintain that kind of perspective on life and the gospel of Jesus Christ?  Surely the rest of us would have found little to live for in life under such circumstances, but Mormon’s faith in God was stronger than the overwhelming wickedness around him.  Certainly he must have been one of the witnesses of the Savior that Isaiah wrote of when said, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace… that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!” (Isaiah 52:7)  I remember my Book of Mormon professor once saying to us, “I’m never ashamed to be called a Mormon because I know who Mormon was.”  What a man he was!