My very favorite scripture mastery scripture this year in seminary is Helaman 5:12. It is all about making Christ the foundation of our lives.
I have been thinking a lot about foundations lately. When I was younger I lived in Oklahoma, and I think there is a construction technique there to strap houses down in some special way. Whether it is a regular house or a mobile home, that technique makes it harder for a tornado to pull the houses off the foundations.
Recently there were mudslides in La Canada Flintridge, California, which filled many homes with mud and demolished a lot of cars. On Feb. 6, at least one house had been shifted off its foundation because of the power and weight of the mud that had slid against it.
I watched the guy on "Mythbusters" make a big vat of cornstarch goo, which has an amazing amount of surface tension if you slap it, but you can also stick your hand right into it. If the guy ran across it, he could stay up, but if he stood on it, he immediately fell in to his shoulders. That wouldn't make a great foundation.
If you've ever seen a picture of the Manhattan skyline, you would notice that all the tall skyscrapers are in one little section of the island. If that land is so expensive, why don't they build skyscrapers all over it? It is because the one section has great bedrock under it, and the rest of the island is made of (glacial deposits?) sand and soil, with no bedrock. No one is crazy enough to build a skyscraper on a soft foundation like that.
I watched a show, a think it was "How the Earth was Made", and the scientist was showing what liquifaction is. He was on the beach, near the water line, standing on the sand. It was plenty hard enough to walk on. He demonstrated that if he slapped the sand in one spot over and over, for several minutes, it began to be softer and softer, until in that location it was just like pudding. He described how the sand had lost its cohesion because of the water that got in between the grains of sand.
I learned about the Niigata, Japan earthquake of 1964. These apartments were built on landfill, and the earthquake shook them until the ground liquified. They started slowly tipping sideways, and they fell so slowly the people all crawled out the windows on the top side.
How strong is my foundation? Is it centered on Christ or can a mudslide, tornado or earthquake knock me off of it? Can repeated pounding soften it? If I am zooming along with everything going right, does my foundation hold me up? What if I get a flat tire or broken leg, or stuck on some major problem, do I sink? Is my foundation solid enough to build a wonderful towering testimony on it? Or will it just hold up a little shack?
There is another part of Helaman 5:12, that talks about where Satan wants us. He does NOT want us on a firm foundation, he wants to drag us down to "the gulf of misery and endless wo". That always makes me picture Gandalf getting knocked off the tiny little path into the deep chasm by the Balrog. I don't want that to happen to me.
So, picture all those things as you read this scripture:
Helaman 5:12 http://scriptures.lds.org/en/hel/5
12 And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.
That is one of the greatest promises in the Book of Mormon: "if men build upon that sure foundation, they CANNOT FALL." I love that.
No comments:
Post a Comment