Nephi's Courage

Yesterday we were reading scriptures as a family, and when we got to 1 Nephi 3:7 I had my youngest son, who can’t yet read, repeat the words as I read so he could take his turn reading.  As I got partway through the verse my two oldest children suddenly burst out into song, “I will go; I will do the things the Lord commands.  I know the Lord provides a way; he wants me to obey.”  They recognized enough the words of that verse to see it was the same as Nephi’s Courage, a favorite primary song about Nephi’s faith and obedience.  It reminded me of my freshman Book of Mormon class at BYU.  When my professor started quoting 1 Nephi 3:7, everyone spontaneously joined in and quoted it together, we all knew the verse by heart.  It was a powerful moment as the Spirit bore witness to us all of the truthfulness of that verse and as we recognized the incredible importance it held for us in our own lives.  I’d like to think it was also a moment of commitment as Nephi’s words became our own and we promised likewise to go and do that which the Lord commanded.

               I wonder if we can’t see this scene of Nephi promising to his father to go and do what the Lord commanded as symbolic of our departure from our heavenly home.  Perhaps we too had a discussion with our Heavenly Father before we were to be sent down to the earth, and if so, might we not have made a similar type of commitment about how we would fulfill our mission upon the earth?  “Father, I will do and do whatever thou dost command and I know that thou wilt prepare a way for us to return back into thy presence.”  We like Nephi then left our Father to come down to earth in hopes of being obedient to His commands and of finding and heeding God’s words.  Nephi faced more trials on the trip than he could have imagined—being nearly beaten to death by his brothers when their first two attempts at getting the plates failed—and yet he persevered and stayed true to that promise that he would.  Likewise our experiences here on earth are surely more difficult than we could have imagined when we accepted to come without yet having a body.  Our challenge is to never let go of our commitment to the Lord: “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.”  Living according to this commitment is a sure way to find our path back to our heavenly home.    

               Ultimately Nephi’s commitment was about faith.  He had the faith to step into the darkness, to leave his father to take on the unknown in order to accomplish what the Lord required of him.  How much we need that same faith in our lives!  As we seek to find answers to difficult questions and challenges that we face in mortality, we come to realize that having all of the right answers is not what we need; rather we need the faith to persevere when we don’t have the answers.  If there’s one gift I wish I could give to my children it would be to have the faith and courage that Nephi had, the undaunting trust in the Lord to go and do even when the path is uncertain and outcomes are unknown.