1 Nephi 1

It's almost silly when I think about my personal thoughts on the first chapter of first Nephi while growing up or even until just recently. For me, its always been the introductory chapter and the chapter that I don't get anything from because I skim over it assuming that it contains nothing more than the infamous "hi I'm Nephi and I was born of goodly parents." Having recently reassessed this notion, I could probably spend days discussing insights that can come from this very first chapter of the Book of Mormon. Not to take away from important insights if we looked into Nephi being born of goodly parents, or him having the faith to know what he wrote was true, or even the one followed by the twelve in Lehi's dream, but this time I'm choosing to address Nephi's making an abridgement of Lehi's writings. The question is simply why? Why did Nephi feel that it was important to write this abridgement? He doesn't mention any reasoning for it in chapter 1, but simply concludes that his father had written many great things and that he wasn't going to attempt to write them all, but that he would breifly review his father's writings and then make an account of his own life. I'm pretty sure that, although Nephi was an inspired man, he did receive revelation to make an abridgement of Lehi's writing by the Lord saying to him that in a couple thousand years a new prophet will give your father's writings to a friend that will lose them and I then won't let him retranslate it. I'm pretty sure that his inspiration came in the form of, I just feel like it's important that I at least abridge my father's work. To now be some 2600 years down the road of that decision and see the results, it's pretty humbling to realize what future effects our following whisperings or feelings of the spirit can lead to.