The First Gathering

Today was my first Gathering for Pathway. For the first hour we went around the room and introduced ourselves. The second hour, we mostly talked about the course syllabus of our Book of Mormon class.

During the class tonight, two things that were said really struck me:

1. When we got on the topic of The Becoming Project, a classmate said "With ALL the good attributes that Christ has, Satan has ALL those opposite attributes and both are vying for us to follow them". 

I never thought about Satan having ALL the opposite attributes that Christ has. Where Christ has love, Satan has hate. Christ has peace, Satan has strife. Where Christ has compassion, Satan has condemnation. Etc.

2. The Senior Couple Missionaries who are over my Gathering class said "For 20 years, every January 1st, we start reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning. We finish it around June. Then around September we are again challenged to read it again by the end of the year, so we do it. We are sooo thankful to be able to do Pathway with all of you, because as many times as we have read the Book of Mormon, we have never "studied" it".
I'm sure most of us can say the same thing. We are taught growing up to "read" your scriptures. We are all challenged to get the scriptures read by a certain date. How many of us can actually say that we have "studied" the scriptures? How many of us can say that we actually searched and did an in-depth study of them. I'm sure not many. I only know of a few people who, instead of "reading" their scriptures, they "study" them. That is one of the reasons I love the Book of Mormon class I'm taking. We aren't just "reading", we are "studying".

When I got home, I told Amber what happened in the Gathering and what was said. When I told her about the comment about "reading" the scriptures vs. "studying" the scriptures, she said "One of the reasons that people "read" the scriptures instead of "studying" them is because they put a "time limit" on when to have the scriptures read by: such as I will read the Book of Mormon straight through, either by this date or in this amount of time. Because of the "time limit" they put on themselves, they don't leave room in their "time table" in order to "study" them".

I totally agree with this. People are sooo focused on "when" they get the reading done, that they don't take the time to ponder what they read. They don't take the time to "search diligently". They don't take the time find hidden treasures. They don't take "time".