Reason To Rejoice

This week I was reading in 2 Nephi chapter 9 again and what really stood out to me is the tone that Jacob takes in his writing. In the first half of the chapter Jacob is speaking about the plan of salvation and kind of talking about the process and what is involved in the plan and the second half he talks about justice. It is a beautiful chapter on the atonement and the thing that stood out to me this time was how often he glories in the the Lord. It almost seems that he's so happy and so excited about it all that he can't contain his emotion. He will talk about a topic and when he moves on to a new topic he say's something along the lines of "O how great the... mercy, wisdom, grace, plan, justice ... of our God." He acknowledged that in every aspect of the plan of salvation the greatness of God is shown in some form.

I realized that I used to be like this. On my mission and before it when I was starting to learn about the church on my own I remember finding things out and seeing them as amazing and revolutionary to me and sharing them with the other members I knew and more often than not them saying, not disrespectfully in anyway, "yeah... we learned that in primary." or something along those lines. I still find joy and peace in the gospel but does it make me as excited as it used to? Not usually. Every once and a while I'll find a passage or two that makes me get a glimpse of the greatness of God and those moments are very special to me but I want to continually be glorifying God in all that I do.

I know that as I search the scriptures diligently and seek and pray more to find the joy of the gospel I can get that excitement back. As each of us grow in the gospel and progress our testimonies we will find that our hearts, as Jacob's did, will begin to "delighteth in righteousness" (2Ne. 9:49) to a greater degree. We will still have those awe-inspiring and reverencing spiritual moments but we will also find more opportunities to delight. This is a gospel of joy and every time in my life when I make a sincere effort to grow closer to the gospel, no matter what my circumstances are, I feel an increase in joy in my life.