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A Thought from the Book of Mormon

I had a thought while I was reading my Book of Mormon yesterday. I was reading in Alma 54, where Captain Moroni, and the Lamanite King Ammoron, a dissenter from the Nephites, are trying to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. For some reason I was struck by verse 4, where it refers to the "servant of Ammoron", who had delivered Ammoron's epistle to Moroni. I got to wondering about this servant, who he was, and why he might have been selected to deliver the message. And the thought occurred to me, almost as if I could see the scene playing out in my head, that this was a young man who was known to Moroni previously, and that he had at one time been a faithful follower of Christ, but that he'd been influenced by the flattering words of Ammoron and his brother Amalackiah, had dissented and eventually joined the Lamanites. He'd been selected to deliver the message because of his previous association with Moroni. Ammoron hoped to gain some intelligence, and get Moroni to let his guard down. And while I'm sure that seeing the servant caused sorrow for Moroni, it also made him even more resolute.

As I continued reading in Chapter 55, verses 4 and 5 caught my attention. Here, Moroni needs to find a creative way to gain a victory over the Lamanites, so he searches among his troops, looking for a man who was a descendant of the Lamanites who can lead a diversion. He finds a young man named Laman, who was one of the servants of the former Lamanite King. 

The backstory of Laman is that he was going along, minding his own business as a servant of the Lamanite King, until the King was murdered by Amalackiah. The murder had been pinned on Laman and his fellow servants, and they had barely escaped. You would think that this would send him into hiding, and far away from the war. But not only had he not run off and hid, he went and fought for the Nephites. 

And it occurred to me how much different Laman was from the Servant of Ammoron. Both of them were dissenters from their own people, and had left religious and cultural traditions behind. But Laman showed a totally different kind of courage than the servant of Ammoron. As a still wanted man, he accepted the task Moroni gave him, and bravely and successfully created a diversion that resulted in a Nephite victory.

Of course, none of this is stated for certain in Mormon's account. But I think there was a purpose to his adding these two individuals, and why perhaps the servant of Ammoron is not named, but only mentioned in passing, And it at least got me to thinking about real courage and dedication, and how to recognize it when I see it. 


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