Wisdom in the Lord

Earlier this week I was reading and thinking about chapter 5 in 1st Nephi—the chapter where Nephi & Co. (Russ points out that they were also in the middle of a relocation) bring back the plates after Sariah has doubted that they will ever return safely. 

After they rejoice together & offer sacrifices and burnt offerings to the Lord, Lehi takes the brass plates and looks through them.  He finds that they contain a record of the Jews “from the beginning,” prophecies of the holy prophets, and a genealogy of his ancestors.  Then he is filled with the Spirit and prophecies about the importance of the brass plates.

Nephi concludes his narration in this section with a bit of commentary—he says that they have done what the Lord has commanded them, and that now they have searched the plates and seen that they are of great worth, and that these plates are going to make it possible to “preserve the commandments of the Lord unto our children.”

And then he says, “Wherefore, it was wisdom in the Lord that we should carry them with us…”

 

I wonder what Nephi was thinking as they were trying to get the brass plates.  They had to travel back several days through the desert to Jerusalem, then try several different tactics before finally getting the plates.  In the end he had to kill Laban.  The whole process must have been so difficult and frustrating and traumatic.  I wonder if Nephi ever wondered why they were doing this, and if it was really that important.  Don’t you think that in the moment he realized that he was being instructed by the Spirit to kill Laban that he must have felt in his heart that they didn’t need anything Laban had badly enough to kill him?

But then, just a few days later, he seemed to be able to understand that having the brass plates would prove to be vitally important to their group as they traveled to the Promised Land.  Wisdom in the Lord.

 

This was good for me to read this week.  The ongoing sadness about leaving combined with the incredible stress of ramping up our house-preparation efforts has left me exhausted and with more murmuring in my heart than I want to feel.  I needed this reminder—that sometimes the Lord asks us to do really hard things.  Things that are not what we want to do, things that push us to all of our limits and break our hearts as well.  But He does it because He loves us and because He knows what we need.

I’m going to adopt this line of scripture to remind me of these ideas.  I have a good idea of what would have happened if Lehi’s family had failed to obtain the brass plates—we see that in the example of the Jaredites, and we are grateful to Nephi and his brothers for their obedience and sacrifice. 

I don’t know why this move is important to our family—but I do know that it is.  So I’m going to focus on that more.  And if you see me muttering to myself, I’m probably saying,

Wherefore, it is wisdom in the Lord…