Aren't connections wonderful?

My favorite parts of my learning experience are when I find connections between different subjects and genres. The most recent one came to me in my Honors 201 class, which is entitled, "The Biblical Tradition in Western Civilization." As you would expect, we have been dealing heavily with the Bible and have participated in several riveting discussions from an "outsider's" point of view. Today we were discussing Joshua 24, in which Joshua leads the Isrealites in a promise to serve the Lord. Professor Benfell taught us that this ceremony is called a "covenant service" and has been studied by many scholars. He pointed out that covenant services occur many more times in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and other books, and that each of them had a general format. He gave us an example of this format taken from Bernhard W. Anderson's Understanding the Old Testament (ask me if you'd like the full citation). I recorded this format in my own words for my own use:

1. Preamble with "Thus saith the Lord" or similar wording
2. Historical prologue ("What he did for our fathers")
3. Particulars of the covenant
4. Recording of the covenant
5. People become "witnesses against themselves" (oaths like "As I live")
6. Listing of promised divine blessings or curses

After writing this down, I was reminded of some annotations I made on the subject of my last post, Elder Eyring's "A Child of God." I underlined and circled some things in the final paragraphs and then wrote:

Good priesthod leaders finish their messages the same way:

• Calling you on feeling the Spirit
• Challenging you to act on his or the Spirit's words
• Promising blessings if you do
• Bearing testimony

When I compared these two lists, I was fascinated to find how similar they were. I found a connection to all of the numbers on my first list:

1: You hear the words of the Lord through the Spirit; a prompting is equal to a "Thus saith the Lord"
2: Stories from the talk of ways Elder Eyring's words helped people and his testimony
3: The major points in Elder Eyring's talk
4: Elder Eyring's talk in general
5: Elder Eyring calling us on feeling the Spirit and challenging us to try it ourselves
6: Promising blessings if we do

In short, I realized that Elder Eyring's talk was his attempt to lead us in making a covenant with the Lord. And then I read my note, "Good priesthood leaders finish their messages the same way" and saw the bigger picture: every address from a worthy spiritual leader is a covenant service. They all follow the same basic pattern, have the same purpose, and yield the same results if taken advantage of. Isn't that so cool?! Maybe I'm just a nut, but I found it amazing.