"It is my meditation all the day, and more than my meat and drink, to know how I shall make the Saints of God comprehend the visions that roll like an overflowing surge before my mind"

Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter-day Saint movement, expresses a soul absorbed in a spiritual quest that surpasses even physical necessities. He suggests that contemplation of the divine, his “meditation all the day”, heightens ordinary experience, becoming his utmost preoccupation. His use of “more than my meat and drink” signals that spiritual revelation and understanding are not merely supplementary to life’s essentials, but supersede them. Where food and drink sustain the body, the pursuit of understanding and imparting sacred knowledge feeds his inner life even more deeply.

Smith likens the revelatory experiences he encounters to “visions that roll like an overflowing surge before my mind.” This imagery evokes a sense of overwhelming, abundant divine communication, not coming in trickles or isolated insights, but in sweeping, powerful movements. The word “overflowing” suggests excess, abundance beyond containment, alluding to a spiritual outpouring difficult to communicate or fully grasp.

At the core of Smith’s desire is not merely to receive visions for his personal edification, but an intense yearning “to know how I shall make the Saints of God comprehend” these revelations. His primary concern lives in the challenge of transmission, bridging the profound, intensely personal experience of revelation with the collective understanding of his followers. Implicit is an acknowledgment of the gap between divine experience and human language or comprehension; it also reveals a shepherd’s heart, focused on guiding others toward grasping what he perceives as truth.

This passage thus provides deep insight into Smith’s self-perception as a prophet: a man tasked not only with receiving divine wisdom but also with translating the ineffable for his community, feeling both the ecstasy and the burden of vision, and forever seeking ways to draw others into the reality that so powerfully floods his own mind and spirit.