Departures of Faith

We have several examples in the Book of Mormon of those who exhibited great faith to follow the Lord or His prophet by physically traveling to unknown lands.  The Book of Mormon starts out with one such story, with Lehi being commanded to “take his family and depart into the wilderness” (1 Nephi 2:2).  He and his family showed great faith as they left all his possessions to travel into a barren desert with the faith that they would one day reach some promised land.  One particular part of the story impresses me.   After eight years of travel in the desert and once they were settled in Bountiful, a place which clearly could have sustained life for them (though probably not many subsequent generations), Nephi built his ship to cross the sea.  Nephi tells us that “the voice of the Lord came unto my father, that we should arise and go down into the ship” (1 Nephi 18:5).  He continues, “And it came to pass that on the morrow… we did go down into the ship.”  Would we jump in the ship the very next day after being commanded by the Lord to leave?  They were about to journey on a ship into unknown lands for months and months at the peril of their lives and leave their safe haven in Bountiful with its “much fruit”—but they still didn’t hesitate to follow the command of the Lord immediately.  Later in the life of Nephi we read of another departure of faith.  After the death of Lehi, and amidst great tensions caused by Laman and Lemuel, the Lord warned Nephi to “depart from them and flee into the wilderness, and all those who would go with me” (2 Nephi 5:5).  Would we go after already traveling so far across the Arabian desert and the ocean and finally being settled in the Promised Land?  The text tells us simply that those who went “believed in the warnings and the revelations of God.”  A very similar departure is recorded in Omni when Mosiah was “warned of the Lord that he should flee out of the land of Nephi” (Omni 1:12).  Again we read that it was those who “would hearken unto the voice of the Lord” that went with Mosiah.  And clearly it was no upgrade in standard of living, for as soon as they made it to their destination, Zeniff and others wanted to go back to “possess the land of their inheritance” because it was so much better in the land of Nephi (Omni 1:27).  And of course we have the record of the Jaredites who traveled great distances under the direction of the brother of Jared until they too reached an ocean.  Moroni tells us that the people all “got aboard of their vessels or barges, and set forth into the sea, commending themselves unto the Lord their God” (Ether 6:4).  What faith it must have taken to get into those little barges and start across the great ocean!  All of these examples in the Book of Mormon should inspire us to more fully trust in the Lord and His servants as we are called to make our own sacrifices.