Scripture Study

When I was working as a custodian at Heritage Halls, a group of us were sitting in the office with our boss, who was talking about her scriptures. She had previously been using one of the white sets like they have in the temple, and that set was really marked up and she used it and loved it until it fell apart and she had to get a new set. She was lamenting to us that she missed her old scriptures with all the markings and she was working on transferring all of her highlights and notes to her new set. I've heard similar descriptions from other people, and it's something I'm completely unable to relate to.

I've tried a few different methods or systems for reading the scriptures. One of the first systems I tried was to underline everything said by God or Jesus Christ (a suggestion made in a talk by a recently returned missionary). I quickly figured out that sometimes this meant there were whole pages underlined in red and it made the markings annoying and pointless, but I had been doing it for long enough that I felt like if I didn't do it for the entire Book of Mormon it would look funny because the last 3/4 wouldn't be marked like that, so I think I finished the entire book like that and then was annoyed about it as long as I used that set.

Since that set was now covered in red I switched to underlining things I liked and sometimes writing notes. Oh, and for some reason at some point I started drawing a star over the word "Wo" every time I saw it because it seemed like if wo was coming to someone for doing something then I should avoid doing that thing, although upon rereading the Book of Mormon I didn't find the starred woes especially helpful.

When I was sixteen I got a new set of scriptures and I was excited to start over. I ended up underlining things I liked with pen, but when I reread the scriptures I found that I liked different things and I had no idea why I underlined a particular word or line anymore, so I hated that I had written in my scriptures. Sometimes I've written notes in the margins, but the things I wrote in the margins twelve years ago are annoying to me now. At one point I had a box of colored pencils and I would highlight things with different colors, which was kind of fun for a while, but the markings still aren't especially relevant to me when I reread those verses later.

I've heard of people color-coding their scriptures, which in some ways is an attractive option for me, but I've never done it because I feel like it would be a distraction from the message.

I've known a few people who choose to read the entire Book of Mormon focusing on a particular topic, but I've found that I focus on different topics as my spiritual needs change, so I don't want to feel locked into a specific topic when my needs change.

I've known people who use the topical guide and study specific topics, but I've found that it gets tiresome to read the topical guide too much, and I don't like missing out on the context, so while I do this occasionally it's not something that works for me for regular scripture study.

There have been a couple of times when I tried reading the Book of Mormon and looking up every footnote, but that was annoying because it took forever and not all the footnotes are good or even relevant.

So in the end I always return to reading the scriptures in order and not really marking anything. A couple of years ago Ryan got me a kindle and I read my scriptures on there, so I don't even have to see the annoying notes and underlines in my scriptures. I mainly read the Book of Mormon because I feel like the Spirit just isn't as strong when I'm not reading it consistently, although I do lament the fact that I'm not as familiar with the other standard works. And sometimes if I feel inspired to write a blog post about a particular topic I will change my scripture study for a while to gather relevant scriptures and talks. It still feels weird that I don't have a system when I see the Ensign articles or conference talks that urge us to find a system for reading our scriptures, but the systems have never really worked out for me. The one thing that I think might be good to change is that I don't spend a lot of time memorizing scriptures anymore, and I think that might be helpful so that I would have a bigger arsenal of memorized scriptures to call on when I need them, whether that's in my daily life or preparing a talk.