Description
Stirred
Because of my recent discoveries in scripture, I had to make bread. To me, homemade bread, fresh out of the oven is one of the simple pleasures of life and speaks loudly of home, love, and family.
I put in the flour, then the salt and sugar. I got the yeast ready. I then added the water, butter, and finally the proven yeast. I added all this into my mixer and turned it on. The days of stirring and kneading by hand are long gone for me. I then stood there and watched it stir, marveling at what was happening. Each of those ingredients standing alone was less than palatable. I wouldn’t make a meal of it, not even the flour. But when I put the selected ingredients together and stirred it up I came out with a beautiful lump of dough, which I then raised and baked.
Why did I make bread? To study the word “Stir.”
Why was this important? Because the word “stir” is found throughout the scriptures for good and ill.
For example: “Behold, the world is ripening in iniquity; and it must needs be that the children of men are stirred up unto repentance.” (D&C 18:6)
And again, from the Book of Mormon:
“Satan had great power, unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity, and to the puffing them up with pride, tempting them to seek for power, and authority, and riches, and the vain things of the world.” (3 Nephi 6:15)
What does the word stir mean? It means to incite, move, or put into action.
Satan has a recipe for destroying us, personally, and as a society. It begins with flour of disobedience or rebellion. Add in some pride, hate, prejudice, anger, and violence. Then stir it all up in the heart of a person, family, or civil society and they will tear themselves apart from the inside. Whatever he stirs up and feeds us is absolutely guaranteed to make us miserable and destroy us.
The great problem is that most people don’t recognize who is cooking for them.
The Savior on the other hand, begins with the flour of His word and the Living Water of the Holy Ghost Add in the salt of fellowship, the yeast of obedience, the butter of repentance, and the sweetness of love. When it is stirred, out comes the Bread of Life which yields the abundant life, here and hereafter.
In our mortal fallen state we are raw, like a bucket of coarse flour. It is an inevitable truth that we will be stirred in mortality by one or the other. God wants to refine, finish and exalt us, while Lucifer just wants to sift us as wheat and stir us into a poisoned gruel. The choice is ours.
Sources:
D&C 18:6
3 Nephi 6:15
