Focus on What You Can Take with You — Alma 39–42

Come, Follow Me: Book of Mormon 2024 (August 5–11)

The day my mother died my brother came to her house. Quietly he went from room to room, upstairs, downstairs. He then solemnly announced, “Nope. She didn’t take anything with her.”  We laughed but were secretly disappointed she hadn’t taken a few of her earthly treasures to lighten our load of dispersing her sizeable estate!

One of the wise counsels Alma gave his son Corianton was this truth, “Seek not after riches nor the vain things of this world; for behold you cannot carry them with you” (Alma 39:14). 

While we can’t take earthly possessions with us, we can take regrets. Alma, the younger, having had a season of regrets in his life, was fervent about helping Corianton avoid them in his life.  

When facing death, there is phenomenal clarity about what really matters. Bronnie Ware, a hospice nurse, documented in her book, The Top Five Regrets of Dying, the most common regrets she heard from her patients. They were: 1) “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” 2) “I wish I hadn't worked so hard.” 3) “I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.” 4) “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” 5) “I wish I had let myself be happier”.

If you were to die soon, what would you regret? 

Like Alma and Corianton, your answer to this question enables you to use regret as a checkpoint and a turning point.

“But here is the grand truth: while the world insists that power, possessions, popularity, and pleasures of the flesh bring happiness, they do not! They cannot! What they do produce is nothing but a hollow substitute for ‘the blessed and happy state of those [who] keep the commandments of God.’ The truth is that it is much more exhausting to seek happiness where you can never find it! However, when you yoke yourself to Jesus Christ and do the spiritual work required to overcome the world, He, and He alone, does have the power to lift you above the pull of this world” (Russell M. Nelson).

Do Hard Divinely Better Lesson #31: Focus wisely on what you can take with you. It brings happiness now and later.