6 o'clock, Loose Teeth, and Ezekial

Five o'clock comes early in the morning.  Too early for me.  And yet, Monday through Friday, almost without fail since last September, I have dragged myself out of bed, gotten dressed and been out the door before six a.m.  I do this so that I can meet with eight-to-ten teenagers each morning and talk with them about the scriptures for 45 minutes.  For those who aren't familiar with this unique ritual, it's called seminary, and members of my church do it all over the world.  High school students study for four years, covering the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon and LDS Church History.  Each course includes the memorization of 25 significant verses or blocks of verses of scripture that help to teach and reinforce the doctrines of the church.  The kids are expected to read the scriptures daily and encouraged to look for real-life applications of the principles taught there.  Sometimes that application is really easy.  Sometimes it feels a little harder.  For me, that was especially true about the Old Testament.

I attended seminary when I was a teenager, but we did home-study seminary, meeting once or twice a week instead of every week day.  Twenty years ago, when my kids were small and we were new in New Hampshire, I taught Seminary for three years.  I took a turn at teaching the Gospel Doctrine Sunday School class just before the seminary assignment . . . and it was Old Testament.  Somewhere along the way, it seems reasonable to think I would have developed some kind of affinity or understanding of those Old Testament precepts and prophets, but that never really happened.  Oh, I loved Abraham, and Isaiah's teachings, though a little poetic, always struck me as profound and insightful.  Joseph in Egypt has long been a hero of mine -- his ability to be patient and cheerful and faithful in the face of injustice and false accusation is inspirational to me.  In general, however, the Old Testament was just long, and full of "do-this"s and then nasty consequences for not having done those.

Not this time.  It feels different.  I don't know that my students are feeling it, but I know I am.  These Old Testament prophets are coming to life for me.  Ezekial?  What a guy!  Elijah, with his ability to talk a little trash with those priests of Baal?  Another hero.  Joseph still stands tall for me, but Daniel's integrity and decorum, living a faithful and obedient life in the middle, literally, of Babylon just blows me away.  Then there are my new Gentile heroes -- Naaman, and King Nebudchanezzar and King Darius.   I mean,  I knew they ended up being good guys, but they went out on some serious political limbs to stand up for the God of Israel.

I even got a warm and fuzzy out of Leviticus.  Who knew?  How have I reached full-on adulthood and never learned that the admonition to love our neighbors as ourselves was first declared by Jesus Christ while in his former role as Jehovah, God of the Old Testament?  In the Mosaic law . . . that harsh and hard-hearted checklist of restrictions and mandates?  I have been thoroughly humbled . . . well, okay, I have been considerably humbled.  I'm not sure yet if it sufficient, and thus thorough, but it has been significant, and I acknowledge it unashamedly.

This week, however, I had an especially sweet experience that I'd like to share.  We're in the book of Joel now, in the part of chapter 2 that was quoted to Joseph Smith by the angel Moroni regarding the last days and the prophecies that would be fulfilled before the second coming of Christ.  Moroni told Joseph that the prophecies had not yet been fulfilled but that they soon would be.  Some of these are dark and ominous prophecies.  Teenagers like to talk about this stuff because it has to do with their futures and the future of the earth.  They like to wonder what it's going to be like.  They like it because it seems a little dark and unknown and just a little scary.

So, shifting gears here a little, I need to tell you a story.  When Johnny was about five or so, he got his first loose tooth.  As our oldest child, his experience was our very first experience with a child losing a tooth.  Not a big deal; happens to kids all the time.  Tooth fairy, quarter under the pillow, little mini-rite-of-passage.  Big kid now.

That's not really how it played.  Johnny freaked out.  He was in tears, coming to us and showing us his wiggly little tooth.  We were confused and tried to encourage him and calm his fears.  This was exciting! It was a sign he was growing up!  Quarters under the pillow!!  Nothing would stop the tears until we finally got the whole story out of him.

See, Johnny was going through chemotherapy at the time.  Every three months for the past two years he had endured procedures and needles and nasty pills.  His belly and cheeks puffed up and all his hair fell out.  And now, he was quite sure, the chemo was making his teeth fall out.  Cue guilt and heartbreak for parents.

It was a relatively easy fix -- we explained to him about baby teeth and permanent teeth, about how it happened to all kids and not just him, about how we had lost our baby teeth too, and look!  We still had teeth in our mouths!  The tears stopped and eventually he managed to drum up some enthusiasm for the quarters under the pillow concept.  Crisis averted.

But why was he so afraid?  He wasn't in real, permanent danger.  Losing a tooth can be uncomfortable, even a little painful . . . and well, there is blood, usually -- all scary things, but they didn't have to be scary.   All we had to do was explain to him beforehand that he was going to lose those baby teeth sometime, and he could have looked forward to that time.  He could have recognized that when the tooth started wiggling, it meant it was getting ready to fall out.  He would have known, kind of, what to expect.  He would have been prepared.

And when we're prepared, we don't need to be afraid.

I told my seminary students this story, and they got it.  They understood that studying about the second coming of Christ would help them to understand the signs as they happened, and to know what the signs really meant, instead of misinterpreting the (sometimes) scary signs as harbingers of eternal doom and destruction and misery.

Because, to be honest, there is going to be some of that -- some destruction and some pain and some misery.  And then afterward there will be such glorious wonders that there are not words invented to describe them. 

Knowledge is light and truth.  It is also preparedness. . . the preparation of peace.  Real, inward, permanent peace.  When we know stuff, we don't have to be afraid.  Anxious, maybe.  Nervous?  Oh, I expect so.  But fear doesn't come from God.  Knowledge comes from God.  Knowledge that disperses darkness and lets in light and brings us hope.  Hope.  Hope.

Man, I love the scriptures.  I'm not always so good at them, but I love them.  And eight-to-ten teenagers.  Even at 6 a.m.