Mormon has structured his story to lead to this moral statement. The events we have seen have been presented to provide the documentation for this assertion, and now Mormon gives us the moral lesson in case we have not yet understood it. We may share with the Nephites the problem of forgetting our God when all is well, and remembering God when all is difficult.
“You’ve probably heard the saying, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Yup. When the crisis is on, watch people get religious. We must be sure that we are praying not only in the tough times, but when things are easy and life is good.
Elder Howard W. Hunter said:
If prayer is only a spasmodic cry at the time of crisis, then it is utterly selfish, and we come to think of God as a repairman or a service agency to help us only in our emergencies. (John Bytheway, What I Wish I’d Known in High School: The Second Semester [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1995], 102.)