Sacred

1 Nephi 19:6

Nevertheless, I do not write anything upon plates save it be that I think it be sacred. And now, if I do err, even did they err of old; not that I would excuse myself because of other men, but because of the weakness which is in me, according to the flesh, I would excuse myself.

To be sacred is to be connected to God and used for religious purposes. Nephi therefore wrote about what he thought was related to God, and he intended his words to help us worship God. Thus, he filtered everything he wrote through this lens of sacredness, and we should read his writing through the same lens. 

We should ask what is sacred about everything we read in the books of Nephi. Even the verse we often take lightly--"And my father dwelt in a tent" (1 Nephi 2:15)--had sacred significance to Nephi. The tent represented the sacrifice that his father Lehi was willing to make to be obedient to God. Lehi had left his home and all his possessions to travel through a wilderness and live in a tent because the Lord commanded it. Nephi knew the sacred source of that sacrifice, and so he included it in his writing. 

Nothing was superfluous or by happenstance in Nephi's words. Each one counted. Each bore witness to Nephi's faith. Every word is sacred.

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