Literally?

I recently read Spiritual Progression in the Last Days by Blaine Yorgason.

It wasn't everything I hoped it would be. Some things felt oversimplified and some felt obvious, but different things hit people differently, and I know the book has still been great for other people.

One thing that I am trying to incorporate is praying for my family in the middle of the day.

Yorgason takes it from Alma 34:21...

"Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening."

I have read that scripture many times. That section is one of my favorite passages in the Book of Mormon. I thought of it as a commandment that you should pray for your households regularly and frequently, but I never would have interpreted it the way Yorgason did:

"Praying at least three times daily concerning our families must be added next (see Alma 34:21) if our prayers are to be mighty in faith." (p. 66)

Really? I thought. Your prayers can't be mighty if they are only morning and night? I thought that he was being overly literal, and that is not the only part in the book where I thought that.

However, that's the part that I am trying to incorporate. The reason is that while I do pray in the morning and evening, I do that when I am getting up and when I am going to bed. There is the family prayer that we do together, and there are prayers over meals. There are also times when I just need to pray.  Regardless, my main prayers are waking up and going to bed, and I am not at my best at those moments. I am tired and my head is fuzzy, and it is probably easy to forget things. Since I need to start my day or go to sleep, it is easy not to wait for an answer. Adding a third prayer may make a difference there.

I don't know that it would have to be mid-day. It could be very reasonable for me to pray right after getting off work, which would be evening technically, but I am changing my focus for the day, from work to personal life, and that could be a good spot for a prayer.

That actually encapsulates my overall reaction to the book. The book is about having your calling and election made sure. I am not sure that I learned anything about the topic that I didn't already know, but it did remind me that it is easy to be casual with our spiritual paths, even though it is important enough that we should not be casual, and so I have been thinking about that, and the book did help with that by getting me thinking. Are there other books that would have worked better? Probably. It's still something.