Have I "murmured" any good in the world today?



Please excuse the iphone pics, I am not a photographer. Merely someone who enjoys writing and has only one fan following(thanks mom). I hope to get better at many things. A picture always adds to any entry. This one seems fitting merely for the fact that my cute 3 year old(complete with her Rudolph nose) looks like she is saying the word 'murmur' right in your face.

By definition, to murmur is a mumbled or private expression of discontent.

I am reading the Book of Mormon, again. Cover to cover. From the beginning there is murmuring. First from Laman and Lemuel then, much to the readers surprise, the good prophet Lehi even murmurs. Insert moment of personal justification, I can still be a good person even though I murmur at times.
So why is this murmuring bad? Elder H. Ross Workman of the Seventy explained that “murmuring consists of three steps, each leading to the next in a descending path to disobedience.” First, when people murmur they begin to question. They question “first in their own minds and then [plant] questions in the minds of others.” Second, those who murmur begin to “rationalize and excuse themselves from doing what they [have] been instructed to do. . . . Thus, they [make] an excuse for disobedience.” Their excuses lead to the third step: “Slothfulness in following the commandment.”
This final step, this slothfulness, stumps progression. No good came when Lehi was murmuring. He did not progress,and neither did those in connection with him.
President Ezra Taft Benson put it most poignantly when he said, ‘When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power’” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1998; or Ensign, May 1998, 82).
This is one of my favorite quotes. It is written on the inside of my scriptures to remind me to keep striving to be obedient, without complaint, because truly I cannot do any good in the world today with murmuring.

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