My Soul Delighteth in the Scriptures

As Nephi described the death of his father and his subsequent challenges with his brothers, he turned to the scriptures and wrote this: “And upon these I write the things of my soul, and many of the scriptures which are engraven upon the plates of brass. For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them for the learning and the profit of my children. Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord; and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard” (2 Nephi 4:15-16). He then described the anguish of his soul over his sins and how he came to the Lord for strength, all of which started with a focus on the scriptures. He showed us that especially when life gets difficult and we are in anguish emotionally, we should turn to the words of the Lord in holy writ. He used three different verbs in relation to the scriptures: delighteth, pondereth, and writeth. That is how we should interact with the word of the Lord in addition to simply reading it. We should delight in the messages and the Spirit contained therein. We should ponder the stories and teachings that we find in the scriptures. And we should write down the things that we find therein and the messages they have for us and for our children. Nephi, who physically risked his life to obtain the scriptures in the first place, showed us that we should be wholly engaged with the word of God in an experience that involves our whole soul.

                When I was growing up, I would always take my set of scriptures to Church, and the same was true for most teens and adult members. We would use them in our classes and turn physical pages to follow along. Today I no longer do that because I have the scriptures on my phone and that is much simpler to carry around. I thought about how things have changed as I watched someone walk into church this past Sunday with her physical scriptures and her phone in the pocket of them. She was ready with both versions of the scriptures, but most of us now only use the electronic version of the scriptures. Certainly we have even easier access to the scriptures through the Gospel Library app than we ever have in the Church. In fact, most of us walk around all day every day with the scriptures available to us in our pockets. Elder Richard G. Scott commented, “Who could have imagined not very many years ago that the full standard works and years of general conference messages would fit into your pocket? Just having them in your pocket will not protect you, but studying, pondering, and listening to them during quiet moments of each day will enhance communication through the Spirit.” Just because they are there in the app on our device won’t help us if we don’t do as Nephi did and find the time to ponder, study, write, and delight in the words of the Lord. What matters is not so much the medium by which we interact with the scriptures but rather the time we spend in those sacred words. Elder Scott continued with this counsel, “Be wise in how you embrace technology. Mark important scriptures on your device and refer back to them frequently. If you young people would review a verse of scripture as often as some of you send text messages, you could soon have hundreds of passages of scripture memorized. Those passages would prove to be a powerful source of inspiration and guidance by the Holy Ghost in times of need.” Most of us find ourselves occasionally with time on our hands somewhere and pull out our phones to look at them. As I pondered how I spend those moments on my phone and the best use of my time, I was struck with this question: “Why would you do anything else but read?” In other words, what could be of more value than turning to the scriptures and other inspired words of the Lord’s servants? If Nephi had had a phone, I don’t think we would have seen him playing games or watching videos or scrolling through social media posts to see what his brothers’ latest complaints were—no, I’m sure that he would have been carefully studying the words of Isaiah! Perhaps our first step towards truly delighting in the scriptures like Nephi is to turn to them first when we pull the phone out of our pockets.