Scripture Power

It was bedtime. Stories were over and it was time for family prayer. Justin was at class (a class that meets, iniquitously, from 7 to 8.50 on Wednesday nights), so Lia took charge in summoning the girls to kneel around her. Julia heeded the summons with alacrity, so as to benefit by comparison with Eli, who lay in bed and refused to budge. When Lia gently urged Eli to come pray, Eli began to murmur and moan. “I don’t want to pray,” she pouted. “I want to stay on my bed and NOT pray”—thus joining, she could have added, the masses of mankind who spend most of their sleeping and waking hours not praying. Repeated petitions met with mounting resistance. Finally, growing desperate, Lia rallied round the redoubt of a weekly scripture.

“Eli,” she began, “don’t you remember our scripture? ‘Pray always, that ye may come off conqueror . . .”

“You,” Julia broke in.

“What?”

“It says, ‘You.’ ‘Pray always, that you may come off conqueror . . .’ You said, ‘Ye.’”

Silence.

Julia, realizing she had, against her every resolution, waxed unwittingly pedantic, began to retract. “I mean, it’s okay that you didn’t say it right, Mommy. It’s okay!”

“Did you want to say the scripture, Julia?”

“Sure: ‘Pray always, that you may come off conqueror; yea, that you may conquer Satan . . .’ Um, actually you can say it Mommy.”

“Thank you,” said Lia. “Pray always, that you may come off conqueror; yea, that you may conquer Satan, and that you may escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work” (D&C 10:5).

Lia smiled her satisfaction. Julia smiled her penitence. Eli meekly joined the family circle. Katharine hummed “Scripture Power,” softly in the distance.