Not All Who Wonder...

“…she truly had mourned because of us. For she had supposed that we had perished in the wilderness; and she also had complained against my father, telling him that he was a visionary man…” Sariah. The first woman mentioned in the Book of Mormon. What can we learn from her story? For those who haven’t read the beginning of the Book of Mormon 30 times more than the rest of it, here’s a quick background. Sariah is the wife of the Jerusalem prophet, Lehi. She is the mother of Nephi, whose written account is well-known perhaps because it is the first one in the Book of Mormon. The first few chapters Nephi’s record summarizes the state of Jerusalem shortly before its capture and destruction around 587 B.C. His father, Lehi, has a vision informing him of the coming destruction. After his preaching is rejected and the people seek to kill him, he is told to take his family and quit Jerusalem. However, it’s not all easy riding into the bliss of a promised land. They sp...

When I was younger, I remember asking my Dad a question. “If Heavenly Father knows everything that is going to happen, does he know whether or not I am going to make it to the Celestial Kingdom?” “Yes, of course he does.” “Then, why doesn’t he just send me wherever now, instead of making me live through it all?” “Well, because it hasn’t happened yet.” Meaning, of course, that God wasn’t going to send me to Heaven or “hell” until I proved my character through my actions. I guess it took a while for the lesson to sink in, but I think the sum of it is this: Foreknowledge cannot rob justice. If God were to assign judgement before the offense, it would be unjust – despite the fact that he knew what was to come. That is the point of agency. Our choices are just as much an evidence to ourselves, as well as to God and the world, that whatever result we attain in the next life, it was dependent on our choices and desires in this one. Shortly after his life-changing expe...

“What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” The words were spoken by the Savior in what James E. Talmage called “the hour of His deepest humiliation. [1] ” Peter, James, and John had accompanied the Savior into the garden of Gethsemane. He had instructed them to watch with him. Yet, as he went and prayed and suffered, all three of them eventually fell asleep. The words feel almost like a stinging rebuke. Here the Savior of the world was suffering under the weight of a world of sin, and his closest friends and disciples couldn’t even stay awake to watch. Someone in my Relief Society made reference to this scripture during the lesson on Sunday. In a touching way that rang true for probably everyone, she mentioned an experience when she struggled with listening in church, or something to that effect, and the words came to her mind, “could ye not  watch with me one hour?” It helped her realize how little she was being asked, and how much she owed the Savior more of her atte...