Beautiful Words

Pardon me while I indulge myself on a favorite topic of mine.

I was thinking recently about how amazing it is that we have written language.  With written language, not only do we have a way to communicate with someone who isn't right in front of us, we also can lock words into place.  Our memories are unreliable and it is easy to, not only forget things, but to remember things that didn't happen.  For example, I remember seeing the traffic crosswalk sign show the symbol for "walk" when I was hit by the bus, but according to all other testimonies, that's incorrect.  When we write things down, we have a permanent record of what actually happened.  There have been multiple times when I've gone back through a journal or this blog and reread entries and been reminded of events that I had long since forgotten.

Not only does this mean that we can communicate to ourselves in the future, but we can relay information to people who haven't even been born yet.  In 1 Nephi, the Lord expresses the importance of the scriptures to Nephi, to the point of commanding him to slay Laban in order to obtain the Plates of Brass (though, yes, according to the law at the time, Nephi had every right to slay Laban for stealing his property).  The word of the Lord existed because His prophets had written down revelations they had received.  The scriptures could not exist today without written language.

Since we know that Adam and Eve had written language, that means that written language was created by God.  And with it, what an amazing tool we have!

I'm sure that it's not terribly surprising I would contemplate something we all take for granted (myself included) since I've dedicated my life to the written word, but it's still nice to take time and appreciate what a beautiful thing that we have with writing.