A Reservoir of Living Water

I was speaking with someone about this talk on Sunday, and thought I'd post it, along with my favorite part:

A Reservoir of Living Water, by Elder David A. Bednar, February 4, 2007 CES Fireside

http://www.lds.org/library/display/0,4945,538-1-4040-1,00.html

He talks about studying the scriptures in three different ways - finding connections, patterns, and themes. When he talks about themes he introduces an idea that impressed itself upon me:

Themes are overarching, recurring, and unifying qualities or ideas, like essential threads woven throughout a text. Generally, scriptural themes are broader and more comprehensive than patterns or connections. In fact, themes provide the background and context for understanding connections and patterns. The process of searching for and identifying scriptural themes leads us to the fundamental doctrines and principles of salvation—to the eternal truths that invite the confirming witness of the Holy Ghost (see 1 John 5:6).

He needed to understand something better, a clearly defined idea: gathering

In preparation for a recent speaking assignment, I was impressed to talk about the spirit and purposes of gathering. I had been studying and pondering Elder Russell M. Nelson's recent conference message on the principle of gathering (see Conference Report, Sept.–Oct. 2006, 83–87; or Ensign, Nov. 2006, 79–82), and the topic was perfectly suited to the nature of and setting for my assignment (see The Spirit and Purposes of Gathering [address delivered at a BYU–Idaho devotional, Oct. 31, 2006]).

He went to the scriptures to learn about gathering and adopted the following approach:

I recognized that I had much to learn from the scriptures about gathering. So I identified and made copies of every scripture in the standard works that included any form of the wordgather. I next read each scripture, looking for connections, patterns, and themes. It is important to note that I did not start my reading with a preconceived set of things for which I was looking. I prayed for the assistance of the Holy Ghost and simply started reading.

As I reviewed the scriptures about gathering, I marked verses with similar phrases or points of emphasis, using a colored pencil. By the time I had read all of the scriptures, some of the verses were marked in red, some were marked in green, and some were marked in other colors.

Now, here comes the part that may make you laugh. I next used my scissors to cut out the scriptures I had copied and sorted them into piles by color. The process produced a large pile of scriptures marked with red, a large pile of scriptures marked with green, and so forth. I then sorted the scriptures within each large pile into smaller piles. As a first grader I must have really liked cutting with scissors and putting things into piles!

Here is what he learned:

The results of this process taught me a great deal about the principle of gathering. For example, I learned from examining my large piles that the scriptures describe at least three key aspects of gathering: the purposes of gathering, the types and places of gathering, and the blessings of gathering.

I noted that some of the primary purposes of gathering are to worship (see Mosiah 18:25), to receive counsel and instruction (see Mosiah 18:7), to build up the Church (see D&C 101:63–64), and to provide defense and protection (see D&C 115:6). In studying about the types and places of gathering, I discovered that we are gathered into eternal families (seeMosiah 2:5), into the restored Church (see D&C 101:64–65), into stakes of Zion (see D&C 109:59), into holy temples (see Alma 26:5–6), and into two great centers: old Jerusalem (see Ether 13:11) and the city of Zion or New Jerusalem (see D&C 42:9; Articles of Faith 1:10). I was grateful to learn that edification (see Ephesians 4:12–13), preservation (seeMoses 7:61), and strength (see D&C 82:14) are some of the blessings of gathering.

Gathering is just an example, but this approach works with even less paper waste and a wider variety of colors if done digitally. This evening I tried giving each topic its own "style" in microsoft word so that the sections could be rapidly sorted out afterwards, which has always been complicated for me. Another way to do it would be to use excel and assign each scripture a word label that can be used for sorting. He points out that he doesn't care whether we adopt this approach, but I have found that it helps me to see things in scriptures that I wouldn't otherwise see, (for example, "gather" might not be the idea I center on when reading the verse in context, even though it might contain an important message about gathering that is secondary to the primary message of the verse - this is a great way to capitalize on secondary and tertiary messages of particular passages).