The Walking Stick

I am often surprised how often I have opportunities to use my pocket multi-tool to help me or someone else. This afternoon, for example, I cut a fallen branch with my pocket saw until it was a good length for a walking stick. Now, I didn't need a walking stick; I was out on my bike at the time, nor did I know anyone in the area that needed a walking stick. But I saw a fallen branch that wasn't of much use, and I new that, with a few minutes worth of effort, I could turn that fallen branch into something that might be useful to somebody. So, I cut that branch down to size and I leaned it against the tree from which it had fallen. I don't know who will end up using that walking stick, if anyone, but I'm glad that I took the time to make it for them.

Checking for Messages Throughout the Day

This morning, I missed a text. Normally, this isn't a very big deal. Texts are usually low urgency. However, this particular text message was pretty important (though not quite urgent), and by the time I got the message, I wish I had gotten it sooner. Granted, everything worked out okay. I got the message eventually, and everything was fine. But when it comes to messages from our Heavenly Father, we aren't always that lucky.

God frequently tries to communicate with us through His Holy Spirit. I would guess that He tries to send us countless messages each day. Yet, I can only guess. Through the hustle and bustle of life, we don't always hear the still, small voice of The Spirit, and when we miss messages from Him, we're generally out of luck. Those time-sensitive messages don't just sit in our phones, waiting for us to notice them. They happen when they happen, and when they're gone, they're gone.

We should try to be open to receiving those messages. Ideally, we should try to be in-tune with the Spirit at all times, but in practice, we often aren't. My hopefully more practical solution is a frequently repeated practice of prayer and listening. Whenever you get moment, pray and ask God if His has any messages for you, and then listen and keep listening as long as you can manage. It's possible that, at the time when you ask, God will have a message for you which you previously missed, but which is still relevant, and which God might resend, when He knows you're listening.

Granted, we are still going to miss plenty of messages,and many of them will be missed for good, but if we make a habit of frequently checking and listening for messages, I bet we'll hear those messages more often.

Checking for Messages

I use my phone as my alarm clock. When it's time to wake up, my phone plays Field Trip from the Finding Nemo soundtrack until I pick up my phone and dismiss the alarm. At that point, I already have my phone in my hand, and the unlock screen even shows me whether or not I have any notifications, including notifications of any emails and/or text messages I may have gotten during the night. From there, it's almost automatic to check my messages, if only to see whom they're from and whether or not any of them are urgent. And so it is that I check my emails and text messages first thing in the morning almost every day.

If only I was that consistent in checking the scriptures for important and/or urgent messages.

The scriptures contain messages that are at least as important as any email could ever be, yet I read the scriptures only about half as often as I look at my emails. I suppose part of my problem is that the scriptures don't send me notifications reminding me to read them, and they don't always come in bite-sized pieces like text messages do. However, that is entirely my problem (not the fault of the scriptures themselves) because, if I was clever, I could find a way to have my phone notify my at regular times, reminding me to read the scriptures, and the scriptures are split into very reasonably-sized verses. So long as I decide that reading a verse or two frequently and regularly is better than reading a chapter rarely and sporadically, I can always manage to squeeze in a moment or two for scriptures, just as I always manage to squeeze in a moment to read my texts.

Perhaps I don't even need to make any specific changes or set any new alarms. Maybe I could make scripture reading part of my morning routine, especially since I already have an alarm for it. My phone wakes me up, I check my notifications, and then I read some scriptures. The Gospel Library app is already on my phone, and even if it wasn't, I could find the scriptures on the church's website. It wouldn't be that hard to make sure I could access the scriptures with only a few swipes and taps and waiting a few seconds while they load. And it all else fails, I can grab a physical copy. In fact, I might try the physical copy first, since it could be considered even more convenient (since I wouldn't have to wrestle with software or wait for anything to load).

Checking my phone for messages is already part of my daily morning routine. It's time I also made it part of my routine to check the scriptures for messages as well.

How to Make Skill Checks Easier

In D&D, the primary mechanic is the Skill Check. Whenever a character tries to do something where there is a chance for success and a chance for failure, they roll a d20, add all relevant modifiers to the number they rolled, and compare their total against the "DC," a target number that represents the difficulty of their task. For example, let's say I was trying to so something of moderate difficulty, with a DC of 15, and I'm pretty good at doing that thing, with, say, a +5 to the check. I would roll a d20, getting a random number between 1 and 20, inclusive, add +5 to whatever number the die rolled, and if the total is 15 or higher, I succeeded at doing that moderately difficult thing.

Normally, the difficulty of a task is set by the DC. The higher the target number, the less likely it is that you'll roll a number high enough to get you to that total. With a DC of 15 and a modifier of +5, I need to roll a 10 or higher to succeed. If the DC was 20, I'd need to roll a 15 or higher. If the DC was 25, I'd need a Natural 20 to succeed. Conversely, if the DC was only 10, I could succeed on a roll of 5 or higher, and if the DC was 5, I wouldn't have to roll at all. Adjusting the DC, the difficulty of the task, has a strong influence on how much luck I'd need to succeed at that task, or how hard that task would be for me.

However, there's another way to adjust the difficulty of a task for a particular character: adjusting that character's modifier. For example, that moderately difficult, DC 15 task requires that I roll a 10 or higher when my modifier is +5. However, if my modifier was +10, I could succeed on a roll of 5 or higher. If I somehow had a modifier of +14 or -6, I wouldn't need to roll because I would be so good or so bad at that sort of task that I'm guaranteed to succeed or fail, respectively. The target number doesn't change, but my skill modifier and my odds of succeeding do.

Personally, I'd like life to be easy. I'd rather not face serious challenges because I'd rather not ever lose. I would love to convince God to set the DC of life about 2d6 lower. But He doesn't seem interested in doing that. He doesn't want to lower the DC; He wants to increase our modifiers. He doesn't want to make life easier; He wants to make us stronger.

God gives us challenges that are actually challenging because He wants us to grow and become more capable as we face those challenges. He wants us to get better and better at facing the challenges of life until those challenges become easy for us - not because the challenges themselves are easy, but because we're so good at overcoming them. Sure, I'd like God to make life easier for me, but I don't need Him to. I can make life easier for myself by growing stronger and getting better at facing it. I can train and exercise my physical and spiritual muscles to the point where tasks that seem nearly impossible now can become relatively easy for me.

I don't need God to make life easier for me; I can make it easier for myself by getting better at life.

Both Grace and Works

Last night, I blogged about the fact that, whatever our problems are, we can seek solutions to them from the Lord through prayer, making prayer a sort of panacea for the problems of life. Yet we usually have to do far more than simply to ask for our desired blessings. That's a lesson we can learn from Zeniff as well. In addition to paying for strength and deliverance, he also prepared his people for their fight against the Lamanites:

And it came to pass that I did arm them with bows, and with arrows, with swords, and with cimeters, and with clubs, and with slings, and with all manner of weapons which we could invent, and I and my people did go forth against the Lamanites to battle. (Mosiah 9:16)

Likewise, in addition to praying for help with our problems, we also need to work for them. Yet, the same can be true in reverse. In addition to any amount of work that we can do, we also need to pray. Elder David A. Bednar once said about as much in a talk he gave at BYU:

Individual willpower, personal determination and motivation, and effective planning and goal setting are necessary but ultimately insufficient to triumphantly complete this mortal journey. Truly we must come to rely upon “the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah” (2 Nephi 2:8).

We have to do what we can, but we also have to rely on the Lord. As has been taught countless times, we need both grace and works.

So, in addition to praying for solutions to our various problems, we also need to work for them. And in addition to working to solve our own problems, we also need to seek help from God. We need to do our part, and we need God to do His. We can't just pray for it, and we can't just work for it. We need both.

The Panacea of Prayer

My main takeaway from scripture study tonight is that we should pray for whatever we need, be it strength, protection, relief, wisdom, guidance, healing, patience, or anything else. God is the source of all blessings. If we need any kinds of blessings, we should pray to God for them. In Mosiah 9:17-18, we read about how the people of King Zeniff needed strength and deliverance, prayed for it, and got it.

Yea, in the strength of the Lord did we go forth to battle against the Lamanites; for I and my people did cry mightily to the Lord that he would deliver us out of the hands of our enemies, for we were awakened to a remembrance of the deliverance of our fathers. 

And God did hear our cries and did answer our prayers; and we did go forth in his might... (Mosiah 9:17-18)

We often need strength. We often need deliverance. We often need help developing Christlike attributes and overcoming the many perils and obstacles of life. Whatever our various problems are, God has the solutions, and He is often willing to offer us those solutions if we ask for them in prayer.

The "Why" Behind Assignments

Earlier this week, I was informed that I don't have to do any more work for one of my classes. In this class, grades are awarded on a points system. Each assignment is worth up to a certain number of points, and students are awarded an amount of those points based on how well they do on those assignments. For example, an Exam might be worth 100 points, and if the student gets all the questions right, they get 100 points, whereas if they only get half the questions right, then they only get 50 points. If, by the end of the semester, a student has earned 90% or more of the available points, that student earns an A. If they earn 89%-80% of the available points, they get a B, and so on. At this point in the semester, even with a month of instruction remaining, I have done well enough on our assignments so far that I have already earned all the points I need to get an A (and there is no "A+" to shoot for). I have already done all the work I need to do to ensure I get the highest possible grade in this class, so I don't need to do any of the remaining assignments.

Yet, I think I'm still going to. You see, I'm not taking this class just to earn a relatively easy A. I'm not taking this class just to fulfill a requirement or to satisfy a prerequisite. I'm taking this class because I actually want to learn. I'm curious about the subject matter we're covering in this last month of instruction, and I believe that completing the assignments will help me ensure that I understand the material and help me remember what I've learned. As a side note, that's one of the benefits of blogging; recording my thoughts and publishing them help me remember these thoughts, or at least allow me to look them up later. I plan on answering the remaining study questions for this class because I want to learn, understand, record, and remember the answers to those questions as well. I'm not doing these last few assignments because I need the points. I'm doing them because I want to learn.

Life is like a great big class. We are all here to learn and to be tested, and at the end of it all, we will be given a final grade. Yet, the goal isn't just to earn enough points to qualify for the highest grade. The point, or at least a large part of it, is to actually learn (and learn to apply) the moral principles taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ. I'm not just trying to get to heaven and doing the bare minimum amount of work required to do so. I'm trying to learn to become a better person. God's commandments are requirements to get to heaven, but they're also guidelines for self-improvement. The former is essential, but the latter is arguably more important. I want to keep the commandments, not just because I have to to get the blessings I want, but also because they're good standards for moral living, and I'd like to be a moral person. I'm not only interested in the final grade; I also want to learn (and to learn to apply) the material. Yes, I want to get into heaven, but I also want to become the kind of person that's worthy to live in heaven, and keeping the commandments is the best way to do both.