The Three Nephites are on Your Shelf

We were talking here a bit ago about how odd it was for the Nephites to have the Three Nephites living among them, could have been their  neighbor down the street, and the Nephites just go about their ordinary lives sinning and repenting and dissenting.  While they are face to face with a living, talking miracle.  I made the point that it would be as if we still mostly had our Apostles the way we do, this guy graduated from the U and worked in business, this guy’s a surgeon, this guy the former commissioner of CES, but also there’s Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Hyrum, still rolling along, deathless immortals.

I bought a new copy of the Book of Mormon a year back. It’s from some publisher. Just the simple act of having the text in a slightly different format in a book that feels different in the hand made me see it with new eyes. Reading the Book of Mormon this year has been a real experience for me.

I was standing there in church with the Book of Mormon in my hand preacher-style when it hit me.  If I can’t deny that I have something that originated as an ancient text then I am holding a living miracle in my hand.  A blatant eruption of the supernatural.  Blatant  and in your face.

When your world is so enchanted that enchantment is ordinary, it is hard to remember that it is enchantment.  With the Book of Mormon,  it’s natural to think you are just looking at a digital or hard copy version of a religious text.  In reality, you are scrolling through the blazing power of God in your app.  It is Excalibur pulled from the stone that you are tossing into your backpack. It is the Three Nephites on your bookshelf.