17 And after we had traveled for the space of many days, we did pitch our tents for the space of a time, that we might again rest ourselves and obtain food for our families.
18 And it came to pass that as I, Nephi, went forth to slay food, behold, I did break my bow, which was made of fine steel; and after I did break my bow, behold, my brethren were angry with me because of the loss of my bow, for we did obtain no food.
19 And it came to pass that we did return without food to our families, and being much fatigued, because of their journeying, they did suffer much for the want of food.
At this point, this is what I wish would have happened. I wish they had all knelt in prayer (united in heart, knit together in love), and prayed, "Heavenly Father, we are tired and hungry, and so are our families. Our best hunting tool is now broken. The temptation to murmur against Thee and become discouraged is strong.
"We know that Thou seest fit to chasten Thy children, to try their patience and faith (see Mosiah 23:21). We have left Jerusalem, and having been following Thy commands as best we can. Sometimes, to our limited understanding, our best just doesn't seem good enough. After all our effort, the blessings/protection/providence we expected have not been realized in the time frame we anticipated (now).
"We are now faced with a choice: hungry and tired as we are, the easy choice would be to doubt and to murmur against Thee, squabble with each other, and to become discouraged and upset. But there is a better choice. We can 'submit cheerfully and with patience' to Thy will (Mosiah 24:15) and trust that in Thy good time, as we continue to do what we can, Thou wilt deliver us and provide for us. Until that time comes, help us not to murmur. Help us exercise and strengthen our patience and trust in Thee. Though we suffer, may our sufferings be swallowed up in the joy of Christ. Help us to wait upon thee (Isaiah 40:31), with utmost assurance (D&C 123:17) that as we continue faithful, we shall see Thy arm be revealed. May our afflictions be consecrated for our gain (2 Nephi 2:2).
"Surely, Thou hast not brought us this far only to let us perish in the wilderness, save it be that we lack even the faith of a grain of mustard seed" (Matthew 17:20).
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
I bear you my solemn testimony that the Lord opens the heavens to his servants today. He will answer your prayers for help beyond your human understanding. But I also bear you my testimony that the words study it out mean a degree of patience, of labor, of persistence commensurate with the value of what you seek.
For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he [does not understand the cost or the value of] the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift.
We could say that our entire life is merely a quest or an exercise to come to understand and appreciate the value of God's love and God's gifts to us.
This evening we again watched the movie Facing the Giants. It is a feel-good and faith-promoting film. However, it made me consider the pitfalls of "telling the happy story." Lest we be overly critical of the film, there are many similar accounts in the Bible, where people are healed, blessed, and even raised from the dead.
It is important for people to know of the power God has to work great miracles in our lives. But it becomes problematic when people try to exercise faith, as Jesus counseled, and yet do not receive the blessing or miracle they seek. Then there is a real risk that their faith may turn sour, and they stop believing in a God who loves, cares for, and blesses them. Perhaps worse, they may believe that God indeed loves and blesses others, but does not similarly love and bless themselves.
What to do? What is the truth? and how shall we teach it?
Hide-and-seek is a universal game that children play. When I was young, the ultimate goal was to hide in a place so that no one would find me. Now I play hide-and-seek with my own children, and my goal is different. Yes, I could hide in a place where they would never find me, but that would only frustrate and discourage them. Now I hide in places that are out-of-sight, but apparent when they search for me. For instance, I will hide behind a curtain with my feet still visible, or behind a piece of furniture that they just have to look behind. This way, it is much more fun for all of us.
Is God playing hide-and-seek with us?
Sometimes when reading scripture, a verse seems to jump out of the page and causes me to marvel, to see the world in a new way. I had this experience when I read Isaiah 45:15:
Verily thou are a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.
And thus Laman and Lemuel, being the eldest, did murmur against their father. And they did murmur because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them.
What are 'dealings?' Here are some definitions from the dictionary appropriate for the above instance:
a personal connection or association with someone
the particular way in which someone behaves toward others
We are children of God. His dealings with us are the dealings of a loving father toward his children. His thoughts and ways are higher than ours (see Isaiah 55:8-9). Sometimes we hear faith-promoting stories of miraculous healings, blessings, guidance, and protection from above. At other times I read accounts of suffering, privation, and loss where God seems absent. My own experience is in between these two extremes.
In the above case of Laman and Lemuel, the account goes on to show that God was leading them out of a wicked and sinful populace, to miraculously guide and provide for them in the wilderness, to grant unto them beautiful and virtuous brides, to teach and empower them to build a fine seacraft to cross the great ocean, and to bring them to a beautiful land of promise. They were not without trials at times: hunger, hard work, and the normal, daily grind that we all face in providing and caring for our families. We could say their biggest trials were a direct result of their own pride, wickedness, and forgetfulness of/blindness to all that God had done for them. However, affliction came to all of them, both the wicked and the righteous. Their afflictions served to chasten them. Let's look at some pertinent definitions of chasten:
to bring to a state of submission; subdue; restrain
to discipline or correct by punishment
to rid of excess; refine or purify
To the wicked, trials are a punishment to subdue or restrain them, hopefully so they will learn and make better choices in the future. To the righteous – who are among the wicked (and sometimes switching places with them) – trials test their faith ("My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"), to further sanctify them, and to shape them and help them become more like Him whose children they are.
This is easy to say, but what about the situation of the woman in the story below?
Elder Benson and Brother Babbel later recounted, from a testimony they heard, the experience of a Church member who found herself in an area no longer controlled by the government under which she had resided.
She and her husband had lived an idyllic life in East Prussia. Then had come the second great world war within their lifetimes. Her beloved young husband was killed during the final days of the frightful battles in their homeland, leaving her alone to care for their four children.
The occupying forces determined that the Germans in East Prussia must go to Western Germany to seek a new home. The woman was German, and so it was necessary for her to go. The journey was over a thousand miles (1,600 km), and she had no way to accomplish it but on foot. She was allowed to take only such bare necessities as she could load into her small wooden-wheeled wagon. Besides her children and these meager possessions, she took with her a strong faith in God and in the gospel as revealed to the latter-day prophet Joseph Smith.
She and the children began the journey in late summer. Having neither food nor money among her few possessions, she was forced to gather a daily subsistence from the fields and forests along the way. She was constantly faced with dangers from panic-stricken refugees and plundering troops.
As the days turned into weeks and the weeks to months, the temperatures dropped below freezing. Each day, she stumbled over the frozen ground, her smallest child—a baby—in her arms. Her three other children struggled along behind her, with the oldest—seven years old—pulling the tiny wooden wagon containing their belongings. Ragged and torn burlap was wrapped around their feet, providing the only protection for them, since their shoes had long since disintegrated. Their thin, tattered jackets covered their thin, tattered clothing, providing their only protection against the cold.
Soon the snows came, and the days and nights became a nightmare. In the evenings she and the children would try to find some kind of shelter—a barn or a shed—and would huddle together for warmth, with a few thin blankets from the wagon on top of them.
She constantly struggled to force from her mind overwhelming fears that they would perish before reaching their destination.
And then one morning the unthinkable happened. As she awakened, she felt a chill in her heart. The tiny form of her three-year-old daughter was cold and still, and she realized that death had claimed the child. Though overwhelmed with grief, she knew that she must take the other children and travel on. First, however, she used the only implement she had—a tablespoon—to dig a grave in the frozen ground for her tiny, precious child.
Death, however, was to be her companion again and again on the journey. Her seven-year-old son died, either from starvation or from freezing or both. Again her only shovel was the tablespoon, and again she dug hour after hour to lay his mortal remains gently into the earth. Next, her five-year-old son died, and again she used her tablespoon as a shovel.
Her despair was all consuming. She had only her tiny baby daughter left, and the poor thing was failing. Finally, as she was reaching the end of her journey, the baby died in her arms. The spoon was gone now, so hour after hour she dug a grave in the frozen earth with her bare fingers. Her grief became unbearable. How could she possibly be kneeling in the snow at the graveside of her last child? She had lost her husband and all her children. She had given up her earthly goods, her home, and even her homeland.
In this moment of overwhelming sorrow and complete bewilderment, she felt her heart would literally break. In despair she contemplated how she might end her own life, as so many of her fellow countrymen were doing. How easy it would be to jump off a nearby bridge, she thought, or to throw herself in front of an oncoming train.
And then, as these thoughts assailed her, something within her said, “Get down on your knees and pray.” She ignored the prompting until she could resist it no longer. She knelt and prayed more fervently than she had in her entire life:
“Dear Heavenly Father, I do not know how I can go on. I have nothing left—except my faith in Thee. I feel, Father, amidst the desolation of my soul, an overwhelming gratitude for the atoning sacrifice of Thy Son, Jesus Christ. I cannot express adequately my love for Him. I know that because He suffered and died, I shall live again with my family; that because He broke the chains of death, I shall see my children again and will have the joy of raising them. Though I do not at this moment wish to live, I will do so, that we may be reunited as a family and return—together—to Thee.”
When she finally reached her destination of Karlsruhe, Germany, she was emaciated. Brother Babbel said that her face was a purple-gray, her eyes red and swollen, her joints protruding. She was literally in the advanced stages of starvation. In a Church meeting shortly thereafter, she bore a glorious testimony, stating that of all the ailing people in her saddened land, she was one of the happiest because she knew that God lived, that Jesus is the Christ, and that He died and was resurrected so that we might live again. She testified that she knew if she continued faithful and true to the end, she would be reunited with those she had lost and would be saved in the celestial kingdom of God.
This question is: could I handle it if God chose to deal with me in the same way He saw fit to deal with this sister? I am grateful for this story. Most of the stories we hear in church are about miracles and savings and healings. There is no such "happy ending" in this story. It is simply a woman lost absolutely everything, but kept on believing anyway. Even Job's story ended with him receiving twice as much as he had in the beginning. We are not told what this woman shall or did receive. Perhaps the very greatest blessing of it all, is her peace. I mean, what could she ever again be afraid of? She lost everything, and still persisted in faith.
In some ways, our second estate, in relationship to our first estate, is like agreeing in advance to surgery. Then the anesthetic of forgetfulness settles in upon us. Just as doctors do not de-anesthetize a patient in the midst of authorized surgery to ask him again if the surgery should be continued, so, after divine tutoring, we agreed to come here and to submit ourselves to certain experiences; it was an irrevocable decision.
In the March 1998 Ensign magazine, Thomas S. Monson made the following statement:
God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.
As I try to seek and understand God according to my experience and my religion, signs point to Him being at the crossroads or the balance between opposing concepts.
Christ is a loving, healing, helping, and saving God. Yet there are so many instances in life when God seems distant, absent; when He does not heal or help according to our pleas and fervent prayers.
According to our record, Jesus quite consistently affirmed that His blessings and healings were contingent upon faith. I wish we had a record of a time when someone came to Jesus seeking a blessing, where Jesus said, "no." The only instances that come to mind are in the case of the Canaanite woman (whose petition He eventually granted), and in the case of Paul:
And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.
For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
I just read an article in the December 2015 Ensign magazine entitled, Returning Home Early From My Mission. It's an article I want to remember and review. It interests me because it is about someone who is trying to do all the right things, but encounters trials and illness that prevent her from doing the "right things" she wants to much to do, and which - according to Church leaders - the Lord wants us to do too.
Our faith must mature in order to know how to feel and think about God when the harder we try, the worse things seem to get. It is a wrestle to know when it is time to do more and push harder, and when it is time to loosen our grip, back off, and leave things in the Lord's hands. The first thought that comes to mind is: "the Spirit will tell you." My experience so far is that, either the Spirit doesn't always tell me, or I don't always know how to listen. We are on this Earth to have experiences and learn from them. How often I have wished that the Spirit would always guide me, and how hard I have tried to always be worthy of that guidance. I'm still struggling to understand the Gift of the Holy Ghost.
Satan is known as the "Father of all lies," but it is important to understand that he will sometimes tell the truth. But he will speak a truth at the wrong time, in the wrong context, for the purpose of pursuading someone to do something foolish or harmful to themself or another.
A good example of this is when he whispers, "You are your own person. You can make your own choices. You don't have to listen to what anyone else says." All true statements, but usually whispered to someone on the verge of making a foolish choice. And he does not add things like, "others who care about you and have more experience are encouraging you to make choices that will lead to your health and happiness. You can make your own choices, but you cannot choose the consequences of the choices."
