Mosiah 24:13-24

24:13-15 – I don’t feel like I gave verses 13-15 enough attention last night, there are some really good points that I love that I want to go into more depth about. So we have the people of Alma being forbidden to pray by Amulon under the threat of death, so they don’t pray vocally, but in their hearts and that is just as good because God hears them. So the Lord says to them “lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage.” Interesting to me that the Lord says that he will deliver them out of bondage because they have made covenants with him, and honored those. I guess if we look at Limhi, they weren’t delivered until after they had softened their hearts and desired to make covenants with God as well. Obviously, making and keeping covenants is not the scale on which adversity is weighed, but it is very important, and this is going to sound stupid, but I never realized how important covenants are until this very moment. When I was debating whether or not to go to the temple, I was only concerned with the view point of “I can’t handle any more responsibility” but a wise and amazing bishop taught me that it wasn’t just the added commitments that I would be making, but that blessings from heaven would be mine. Even now I do things or don’t do things because of what I think is right or wrong, but I’ve never said to myself “I’m not going to do that because I promised God I wouldn’t,” or “I made covenants with God and I’m going to act accordingly.” This is a new concept to me and I feel like there is much that I need to reflect on about the nature and importance of my individual covenants with God. This is an interesting lesson that I hadn’t anticipated learning tonight. The Lord tells his people “lift up your heads and be of good comfort… I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs.” This has happened to me before, back in 2006 my then husband deployed to Kuwait and I took my daughter and me pregnant with my son, back home to live with my parents while he was gone. It was a very difficult time for me because I was commuting 3 hours every day back and forth to school, I was pregnant and my daughter was very young, and she had a difficult transition from family life with her daddy and me to living with a full house at grandmas. I was tired, I was lonely, I was overwhelmed, and I had just started going back to church, so I was in the throws of spiritual upheaval. I remember crying on my way to school one morning, exhausted, praying and telling God about my struggles and this was one of my most humble moments as I realized the depths to which I had fallen while being away from the church for so long. I remember getting up several months later in testimony meeting and talking about how I could relate to this story because I felt like, even though my situation didn’t change at all, I couldn’t even feel my burdens anymore. I felt peace and happiness, I had more patience and I was able to relish in the joyful moments in life instead of dwelling on the hardships. The March 2010 Ensign has many amazing articles on enduring trials and growing spiritually during them, so if you feel so inclined, go read/listen to it and it will be uplifting. I guess the real issue comes down to, how exactly do we “be of good comfort” during some intense trials. I guess we could start by looking at the fact that there are always trials in our lives, some are worse than others, but the idea that there are bad times to suffer through to get to the good times where we can find happiness is not valid. Sometimes the afflictions are sore, sometimes they are just in the background. In the March 2010 Ensign there is an article entitled “Learning through Life’s Trials,” in which he says “trials give us opportunities to show the Lord and ourselves that we will be faithful. We can choose to feel sorry for ourselves and ask, “why me?” or we can grow from our trials, increase our faith in the Lord, and ask, “how can I be faithful in the midst of this trial?” We can let adversity break us down and make us bitter, or we can let it refine us and make us stronger. We can allow adversity to lead us to drift away from the things that matter most, or we can use it as a stepping-stone to grow closer to things of eternal worth.” The author Larry Richman says there are several things that we can do to stay close to God during a trial such as “Rely on Christ… When we turn to Christ, we will not only find the comfort we seek, but in so doing we will also gain an increased testimony of the reality of the Savior and His atonement, which can heal all suffering.” Interesting, the atonement can heal all suffering. It sounds like by praying and assumedly searching the scriptures, Alma and his people were able to use the atonement of Christ to heal them as they suffer. “Rely on others… We need to allow other people to be instruments in the Lord’s hands to help us through the challenges in life.” It seems like the people of Alma already had this down pretty well when Amulon got there, so maybe this is a problem that we need to focus on a little bit more. Alma taught them to love one another, not to fight with each other, and to share everything they had with each other. This community effort and unity no doubt was a huge contributor to the easing of the burdens placed upon the people, the people were more willing and able to be used in God’s hands to answer each other’s prayers. “Let adversity make you a better person,” I think that this comes back to the bitterness that can over take us if we allow it too. Wallowing, self-pity, anger, revenge, hatred, all these things are the negative results that we must fight to keep away when enduring trials. Along these lines, there is the idea of gratitude infusing our daily lives constantly, laughter, and an eternal perspective. The one point that he made that I thought very profound is “Live with Integrity.” He tells the story of a man who “has felt same-gender attraction his entire life,” and I thought this to be an interesting story since we as a society are so at war with each other over the issue of same-gender attraction. I find this topic to be most simple in understanding and treatment, first we all have our issues, some people are attracted to the same gender, some people are attracted to the opposite gender, some people have disabilities that render them lonely and unable to have a companion in this life. I am a single woman and holding out for a righteous LDS man to marry me in the temple, and I understand that having this standard means that I might not marry again in this lifetime. God has decreed that marriage is to be between one man and one woman, and any sexual activity outside of that is unacceptable. So gay, straight, single or married, the law of chastity demands that we keep our hands to ourselves outside of the bonds of marriage, and expecting an unmarried gay man to be celibate is the same as expecting an unmarried straight woman to be celibate. We are so upset all the time with “being gay is a sin,” blah blah blah, feeling same sex attraction is no more a sin than me being attracted to black men, the sin comes in when either one of us acts on those feelings outside of the bounds set by the Lord. It’s difficult, the loneliness and heartache that comes from living a life alone is so terrible, but the Lord will bless us accordingly, even if it is not in this life. So in the story, “Cody” is attracted to other men, but “he doesn’t listen to the world’s view that he was born that way and has no accountability for his actions.” I had not considered the fact that this is the attitude in general concerning all people, gay or straight, we are convincing ourselves that we are not accountable for our actions, especially when it comes to sexual activity. “He knows that the commandments and blessings of the gospel are as real and relevant to him as to anyone else. Cody is living his life with integrity to the principles he knows to be true. He knows that if he lives faithfully, all the blessings of the gospel will be his, either in this life or in the next. He knows that his present trials don’t determine who he really is, but his response to them will influence who he will become. Yielding to adversity makes us weaker. Keeping the commandments-no matter how trying- makes us stronger and helps us overcome every challenge in life. Through faith and obedience, we qualify for the divine spiritual guidance we need to guide us along unknown roads.” I thought that this story was most profound, and interesting since all over the news yesterday were people up in arms about some comments that some guy on tv said about gay people, and it made me sad because I wonder how Jesus would have responded, how can we be full of love and say things about people judging them as immoral and on the flipside, bigoted. Anyway, maybe I’m getting a little bit side tracked, but the idea of love, non-condemnation, sharing, service, trusting God and having a positive attitude is perhaps what helped ease the burdens of Alma’s people, though their circumstances didn’t change, even in this “they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.” And I think that here is really the key to enduring trials well, submitting and being happy. Submitting in the sense of accepting the Lord’s will, for instance, Alma submitted to Amulon’s rule by obeying his unjust laws, while Limhi did not submit to the will of the Lord by fighting back 3 separate times. Me in my life, the shift that I work leaves me little time with my kids, so I can fight it by applying for other jobs or constantly pestering management to give me a different shift, and it’s not going to do anything but irritate people, or I can have a bad attitude. Or I can submit to God’s will and have a good attitude, stick with what I have, and try to make the time that I do have with my kids very meaningful. And “cheerfully” submitting goes into the whole having a good attitude, being grateful, laughing, smiling, serving others, etc.

24:16-24 – Now is the time for Alma and his people to be delivered, out of bondage and how it happens is similar yet profoundly different than how Limhi’s people were delivered. Limhi’s people first had to have righteous outsiders come to them and teach them before they were ready to be delivered, then they had to make plans, knock out their guards with alcohol, and then leave in the middle of the night. Alma’s people didn’t have any of that, all the Lord did was say “pack your stuff, you’re leaving tonight,” and they packed up and left in the morning. There was no forewarning, there was no time needed to convince people that leaving was the right thing to do, and let’s think for just a second what would have happened if the Lamanites had not been in “a deep sleep,” if they would have just woken up as normal after Alma’s people spent all night packing up their stuff. I wonder if they knew when Alma told them to pack up that they would be delivered because their “task-masters were in a profound sleep,” sent by the Lord. Alma’s people spent all night packing and they left in the morning, bright as day, there was no sneaking around in the darkness, they left in full view of the sunlight. If the Lamanites had woken up in the morning and seen that all the people had their stuff packed and ready to flee, the violence that would have ensued would have been brutal, and I bet that the people knew that as they were packing, but the trusted God enough to risk the violence and believe that somehow, someway, they would be able to leave in the morning. Alma presumably didn’t know where Zarahemla was any more than Limhi did, but there was no need for outsiders to help show them the way. The Lord warned Alma to take the people out of the valley that they had stopped so that “all their men and all their women and all their children that could speak lifted their voices in the praises of their God,” out of the valley but promised that “I will stop the Lamanites in this valley that they come no further in pursuit of this people.” This gives the people peace knowing that they could travel in safety from that point forward, and strength to know that they are moving in the right direction and will be free soon enough. And in the end, without any outside person coming to their rescue “they arrived in the land of Zarahemla; and king Mosiah did also receive them with joy.” This is a very interesting contrast between the faith in God held by Alma and his people and the faith in men held by Limhi and his people. The flight of Limhi was much more dramatic and anxiety driven, whereas the flight of Alma was peaceful, calm, and their way was shown to them plainly. Limhi had to be “delivered” by Ammon and the adventurers, Alma was delivered only by God. It would seem possible that Limhi’s people couldn’t have been simply delivered by God because they would have resisted it, there wouldn’t have been enough interaction with them and God, they wouldn’t have known the plans, they wouldn’t have been confident that they could find their way to Zarahemla, and they fled their land quickly, making their march I haste and anxiety, when the Lord stopped the pursuing Lamanites after 2 days. Limhi’s people would have fought the Lord tooth and nail being delivered by any other means, they still held on to the natural man, whereas Alma was able to say “ok it’s over, God wants us to leave in the morning with all our stuff, and then he will take us to Zarahemla.” I would imagine that among Limhi’s camp, there would have been too much doubt and insecurity for the plan to have been that simple and up to God. Maybe this is a lesson to us that God will deliver us himself is we simply do what Alma’s people did, submit and be happy, keep the commandments and strive to keep our covenants and be closer to him. But if we fight against God’s will, doubt his abilities or intentions, we will suffer longer to become humble, we will have our deliverance be prolonged as things move into place. Really, God delivering the people to Limhi the way that he did was an enormous gift, he could have just backed off and said “ok, when you’re ready to listen, I’ll deliver you.” But God knew that even though spiritually not on par with Alma, Limhi and his people were making improvements and desired to grow in righteousness, and that they were moving forward and delivered them in a way that they could handle. Maybe showing us that God loves us all and will bless us as we strive to keep the commandments no matter where we are spiritually. We don’t have to be as spiritual as the prophets to receive the Lord’s attention and help, we just have to ask and be open to it.