The final Light the World challenge is to follow Jesus Christ. His disciples did this literally, by leaving their nets by the seashore and following Christ as He travelled and taught. Many others also followed Him, even into the mountains, to hear Him teach. These days, we don't have the option of literally following Jesus, and thankfully, we don't have to. Back in those days, the only way to hear the words of Christ were to literally follow Him and listen, but these days, we can read and hear His words by making a few taps and swipes on our smartphones. We don't have to hike over rough terrain to listen to Him; we can just go to LDS.org and follow almost any link from there. Our access to Christ's words is so effortless, we no longer need to literally follow Him to maintain it. However, we do need to figuratively follow Him to make any good of it.
We have easy access to the scriptures, but they're not going to change our lives unless we choose to change our lives to match Christ's teachings. It takes effort to follow Christ's teachings, just as it took effort to literally follow Jesus Christ. In fact, I wonder if the difficulty of obtaining Christ's words took some of the difficulty out of living it. It's easier to cherish something we work hard to get than something that's just handed to us. Perhaps having so much access to the words of Christ has made it slightly more difficult to care about it and to choose to learn from it. Maybe we still have to climb a mountain to gain the benefit of Christ's teachings, but our mountain is more figurative than literal.
Still, let's be as diligent as Christ's early, literal followers by figuratively following Jesus Christ. Since we're not faced with any challenges in obtaining Christ's teachings, let's rise to the challenge of applying it. I know that as we figuratively follow Jesus Christ, our lives will literally change for the better. We don't have to literally follow Jesus Christ anymore, so let's follow Him figuratively instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment