Prompted to act

“By small and simple things are great things brought to pass,” Alma says to his son after telling him to make sure the records of the Nephites are kept clean—retain their brightness, appear shiny, as he puts it.  It was probably a simple task, however, an essential one.

A small thing that I feel grateful for: Mormon paying attention to the Spirit of the Lord. He says “But behold, I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me; and I know they will be choice unto my brethren. And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will.” WofM verses 6 and 7.

I never understood what Mormon meant until I stopped to think about what he was actually doing.

After making an abridgement of all of the plates and records he had with him and creating a single set of plates—the Book of Mormon; he came across a small set of plates that he calls the Plates of Nephi. He likes what they say and as he reads through them, the Sprit inspires him to add them into his current abridgement—FOR A WISE PURPOSE.

What was the wise purpose? If you remember, Joseph Smith began the translation of the Book of Mormon and after generating 116 pages of manuscript, he lost all of his work. Rather than have him begin again, the Lord commanded him to begin the translation from where he left off. We have no idea what these 116 pages contained—however, Nephi did.  

These plates of Nephi—found by Mormon, as a reader of the Book of Mormon knows, contains a summary of Nephi’s travels with his family in the wilderness. It also contains a summary, written by Nephi, of Lehi’s teaching and prophecies. This is the information that was lost from the 116 pages of manuscript.

Without this summary, we would never have known about Nephi’s childhood, struggles with his brothers, miracles in Jerusalem, Lehi’s dreams and visions, etc. Some of the sweetest teachings to ever be known were almost lost forever.

Mormon, because he felt a prompting to do so, added Nephi’s plates to his abridgment and because of that, we have one of the utmost testimonies over recorded—Nephi’s.

If Mormon had not heeded this prompting, the beginning quarter of the Book of Mormon would have been lost forever.

I’m inspired by such a simple act—heeding a prompting that has changed the lives of millions. I hope to be as in-tune and diligent as he was. Maybe I can go do something small and simple too.