Two Women of Faith

There are two accounts in the Book of Mormon telling of the “tears” of a righteous woman, and I think both show us examples of great faith.  The first is in 1 Nephi 18:19 when Nephi was tied up on the ship and his brothers would not let him go.  He wrote in describing the event, “My wife with her tears and prayers… did not soften the hearts of my brethren that they would loose me.”  That’s all the details that we have about what Nephi’s wife did, but it clearly shows she was a woman of faith, putting her trust in the Lord.  Her prayers did not soften the hearts of Laman and Lemuel, but surely they did cause the storm to continue to the point that Laman and Lemuel finally gave it up and let Nephi go.  Nephi’s wife did everything she could in the situation, which was simply to prayer and trust in the Lord.  The second story is that of the Lamanite woman Abish who tried to help in the conversion of the Lamanites after Ammon came and started teaching the king and queen.  She gathered all of the people together so that they could see what had happened to the king, but her plan seemed to somewhat backfire as it caused a great contention among the people.  We read that “when she saw the contention which was among the multitude she was exceedingly sorrowful, even unto tears” (Alma 19:28).  At that point she took what I think was a great leap of faith, walked up in front of the whole crowd, and pulled the queen up off of the ground.  It must have taken great courage to do that, especially considering that she was the servant approaching the queen uninvited.  But I think she knew that she had to do something or the situation could have become much worse, and so putting her trust in the Lord and boldly brought back the queen.  Both of these examples seem to illustrate that when we are in critical moments and our power to bring solutions to difficult situations is very limited, we can still put our trust in the Lord and do something to allow the Lord the opportunity to show forth His power.