Jacob 1

I feel bad for the delay. Sorry! I need to make this one short.

This chapter really feels like a lot of my journal entries after long delays, "So I had a great semester in school, oh and I met this great guy and we dated, and oh, now we're married!" Okay, maybe not quite, but you can tell that Jacob is running out of room on the plates and is trying to summarize the history of the last 55 or so years into this one chapter so he can use the rest of his space to record spiritual matters. He really emphasizes the responsibility he feels to preach the gospel to his people. That is a theme that I've noted before in the book of Jacob. He really feels that if he doesn't do his absolute best to preach to his people and magnify his calling, then their sins will be on him.

In v. 15-16 he mentions the main struggles of the people--they are taking many wives and concubines, they are obsessed with riches, and they are growing very prideful. These are issues that he goes into much greater detail in the next chapter.

I took away two things from this chapter:

1. I am not limited in space. I can take up as much room as I need in my journal or on my comptuter in order to record my life and history. I also can use the space to talk about spiritual and temporal matters. I am not as restricted as Jacob was. So I really need to keep a regular journal, and make sure to record my spiritual insights and experiences as well as day-to-day life. I think that things of a spiritual nature may be of more worth to my descendants than temporal things.

2. Jacob feels incredible responsibility towards his people to preach the gospel. I need to cultivate my testimony and desire to spread the gospel so that I can be as diligent as he was. We are reluctant to think about it sometimes, but we do bear a responsibility to the people that we know and love to share the gospel with them.

It's nice to enter a new phase of the Book of Mormon. Have a nice week!

Tori