Repetition is one of the most common methods of learning. We have all heard the admonition to keep saying it until you know it by heart or keep doing it until you can do it without thinking about it. As a young man I was a bricklayer by trade, when I first stood on the plank scaffolding as an apprentice, next to seasoned journeyman bricklayers, I was overwhelmed. When I held the trowel to spread the mortar in my hand for the first time, it was the most awkward tool I had ever held. I had watched bricklayers laying brick, every day, for at least two years. I had been a hod carrier, building scaffolding, mixing mortar, supplying bricklayers with bricks, mortar and anything that they needed to keep them laying brick. They were paid a lot of money and the boss depended on hod carriers to keep them busy. I was a fast worker and the boss recognized the fact and figured if I was good at hod carrying that I would probably make a good bricklayer. That’s when he told me to get on the wall and lay brick, after providing me with the tools to do the work. After a short few days of awkwardness, while getting the feel for my new job, I was soon laying brick with the others. It was all in the learning process called repetition. The learning process of life is all a matter of seeing others doing the thing we need to learn and then repeating it ourselves over and over again.
Many people complain, or at least wonder, why we have to hear the same thing in church all the time. The repetition helps us and reminds us of God and the things of God that we need to understand. Those things depending on faith are a good deal different than the things of the world. Things that we can see, things that we can feel and the things we hear with our ears, are all things of this earth. Even though we cannot experience the things of God, and of the spirit, as we do the things of earth, they are just as real. They can only be experienced through our spiritual senses and they are not before us constantly as is the world and worldly things. The things of the spirit are spiritually discerned, only. That doesn’t make them less real; only less real to those who have not prepared themselves to receive them. We prepare to receive the things of spirit by studying the scriptures, praying to our Heavenly Father, singing spiritual songs and discussing spiritual subjects. One eventually becomes a spiritually oriented person. Repetition makes one a bricklayer, a carpenter, or one who understands electronics-computers, etc, even a spiritual person.
There is a story about a woman’s club president who was addressing a group of elderly women and she said, “Passing a resolution to make this a better world isn’t enough. It’s my experience that to get things done you have to keep nagging.” She was right on! Because of our forgetful nature as human beings we have to be regularly reminded of things. For example, most sermons are merely a reiteration (repetition) of things that we have heard many times before, but it is necessary that we have them renewed every so often or many of us would forget those spiritual things, things not of, or in the world and before our eyes every day. God and His Christ are not before us to see, to communicate with in person, or to hug as you would your earthly father. We may have a belief in God, but do we think of Him as a reality? The belief may not be enough to prompt one to works of righteousness. We must be knowledgeable about Him enough to literally know in our hearts and minds that He is a reality.
Our Elders Quorum president told of a time some years ago, when all of the various church leaders from all of the denominations in Logan, Utah decided to meet once a month. At the first such meeting an stake president from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints suggested that they begin the meeting with prayer because of the spiritual nature and purpose of the meeting. The non LDS church leaders looked surprised and said, “ We haven’t any prayer for such an occasion as this.” We are grateful for our literal belief in God so that we can offer a prayer from our hearts and not always depend on a piece of paper to say a prayer. The repetition of prayer, sermons, lessons, and attendance at church, like all other things in this world, such as learning how to ‘lay brick’ is what will keep Him alive in our spirits and in our lives.