I’ve been thinking about this a lot.

Someone posted a picture recently that said, “I miss the toilet paper memes/stimulus check part of quarantine. Things are just getting dark now.”

I laughed, and then I got a little sad.

Everyone’s been navigating the past few months seemingly blindfolded – and then thrown a bunch of heavy social, political, and moral conundrums on top of that.

So what are we letting everything do to our souls?

At the end of the long, drawn-out, devastating war between the Nephites and the Lamanites, Mormon noticed two groups of people who emerged:

• Many people became hardened.
• Many people humbled themselves before God.

Same war. Different personal outcomes.

I’m sure each Nephite had different individual experiences with the war. Some had family members in battle, some lost loved ones, some were displaced, some dealt with political turmoil and rebellion, some had to change jobs. Some barely had anything change.

But at the end of the day, some people chose to harden their hearts because of the war.

And others chose to humble themselves.

Have you felt your heart get a little harder or a little softer these past few months? Have you made more enemies or more friends? Have you empathized more or judged more? Have you been a creator of joy and peace or of confusion and anger?

I think it’s perfect, not-so-coincidental timing that we are studying the end of the great Nephite-Lamanite war right now.

How will we reflect on our 2020 when it’s all over?

Which group will we be in?

The good news is that we’ve still got plenty of time left.

If we’ve felt hardened, if we’ve felt less love for others, if we’ve felt distant from God, we can practice humility.

And boy, does it take practice.

Praying to remove any pride. Feeling true empathy. Turning to our Savior.

And when presented with the ever-growing variables for the future, we can face them with love and faith. We can reach out in love and kindness to our neighbors. We can serve with love to our God.

The outside circumstances? Really, “it mattereth not.”

What matters is how our heart responds.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post What is the year doing to our soul? first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

She’s really good at rolling out the different colored play-dohs, pressing them into molds, and folding them into “tacos”.

She’s still learning how to clean it up, though.

A few hours after we play with play-doh, I inevitably find little “tacos” that fell underneath the table. They are a little crusty around the edges, but I usually try to squish them back into a container.

But after repeating this too many times, the play-doh becomes hardened to the point that I have to throw it away.

It doesn’t usually happen all at once. It’s a gradual process, becoming just a little more difficult to mold each time.

Whereas the play-doh that’s been put away nicely each time is still perfectly moldable.

It might be a silly analogy, but to me it’s the perfect representation of how our hearts and desires can change over time.

We are all little balls of clay that are being exposed to the harsh air of mortality – we’re naturally going to start to harden around the edges if we aren’t put away in a secure container.

We are given two choices:

Repent or become hardened.

When we keep repenting and changing, we allow those little rough bits to be picked out.

We show that we are willing to continue being molded into something better than the “taco” we might harden into. (I know, tacos are fantastic. But we can become even better than tacos, imagine that!) 

So what are we doing to prevent our hearts from naturally hardening?

Exposing our minds to harsh worldly entertainment, constant debates on social media, or rude attitudes will eventually keep us from being molded as easily.

And the key to preventing this?

Constant repentance. CONSTANT repentance.

Constantly changing and constantly being molded into something new at the hands of our Savior.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Hardened play-doh first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.