A Vow Before the Lord

I just finished listening to Gerald Lund’s latest book The Shadow Falls and was intrigued by the description it gave of the Oberammergau Passion Play that depicts the last week of the Savior’s life.  The play is performed every decade by the town, and what I found fascinating was the way that the play got started.  In early 1633 the bubonic plague was sweeping through the region and the death rate was twenty people per month in the town.  The villagers “vowed that if God spared them from the bubonic plague ravaging the region, they would produce a play thereafter for all time depicting the life and death of Jesus.”  The rate of deaths did drastically decrease within the next few months, and the villagers believed that God had answered their petition.  Therefore. they put on the play for the first time in the next year and have continued it approximately every decade since then.

               Generally speaking, when we read about the covenants of the Lord and the promises we make with Him, they are set on His terms.  For example, we don’t get to decide what the conditions of baptism are; the Lord is the one who has declared in D&C 20:37 what one must do in order to be baptized and receive a remission of their sins.  But it seems that on rare occasions in the scriptures we see mortals who make a vow or agreement with the Lord in a similar manner that the people of Oberammergau did in 1633.  Perhaps the most famous is that of Hannah when she desperately wanted a son.  She told the Lord when it seemed as if she could not have children, “O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head” (1 Samuel 1:11).  The Lord did honor the vow by granting her a son, and she fulfilled her part of the promise by giving him to Eli to serve the Lord.  Another example comes from Jacob.  We read that when he was in Bethel, “Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee” (Genesis 28:20-22).  Surely this was a vow that he kept, and perhaps one of the many fulfillments of this from the Lord’s end was when the Lord through Joseph saved Jacob’s life by literally giving him bread to eat.  Another interesting example of someone in the scriptures setting the terms with the Lord is that of Gideon who told God, “If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said” (Judges 6:36-37).  The Lord did that, and then Gideon asked the Lord to do the opposite on the following morning to again confirm that He would save Israel.  It seems a rather odd way of asking the Lord to tell you what He is going to do, but the Lord honored the request and confirmed to Gideon that He would save Israel.

               I not sure what makes this kind of vow or request justified before the Lord, and perhaps it is only  when we are moved upon by the Spirit of the Lord.  What we do see by these examples, though, is the mercy and love of the Lord to bless His children according to their righteous desires.