The Jaredite Journey

One of the themes that I see in the account of the brother of Jared and his family is the need to continually be stretched.  The Lord does not want us to settle for mediocrity.  He doesn’t just want us to get past our problems; he wants to perfect us through them.  The account of their travels to the promised land is, I believe, a representation of this idea.  We see it first in Jared’s attitude as he encouraged his brdother to pray for them at the time of the confounding of the languages: “Go and inquire of the Lord whether he will drive us out of the land, and if he will drive us out of the land, cry unto him whither we shall go. And who knoweth but the Lord will carry us forth into a land which is choice above all the earth?” (Ether 1:38)  He didn’t just want to escape their situation; he wanted to go to the best place the Lord could offer them.  And that’s exactly what the Lord wanted to give to them, but it was no easy journey. 

               The first instruction that the Jaredites received was to go “down into the valley which is northward” (Ether 1:42).  They followed the instruction and made it to the valley of Nimrod, but this wasn’t good enough for the Lord.  Once there, “The Lord commanded them that they should go forth into the wilderness, yea, into that quarter where there never had man been” (Ether 2:5).  They were, it seems, on the edge of civilization, but the fact that no one had been there before did not deter the Lord from commanding them to continue to go forth into the unknown.  It appears that they had to travel a great distance, for we are given this synopsis: “It came to pass that they did travel in the wilderness, and did build barges, in which they did cross many waters, being directed continually by the hand of the Lord” (Ether 2:6).  I have to wonder if each time they crossed another big body of water or reached another promising location, one of them didn’t say, “Hey, you know what, this is good enough.  It looks like a great place to settle down and I’m tired of traveling.  Let’s forget about the whole promised land thing and stay here.”  But the Lord wouldn’t let them settle for a mediocre place—He was determined to get them to the very best place: “And the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness, but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise” (Ether 2:7).  The Lord won’t suffer that we stop prematurely; He wants to get us all the way to the promised land.  The group eventually made it to the seashore of the ocean, where they stayed for four years.  Like the Nephites who made it to the seashore to the place they called Bountiful after eight years in the desert only to build a ship and keep going, the Lord still had more in store for the Jaredites.  They built more barges and traveled for nearly a year across the ocean to finally arrive at the promised land.  Surely the story is symbolic of our own journey through mortality; the Lord won’t be satisfied until we are perfected and have returned to Him in His kingdom.  In the meantime, we can be grateful for the progress we may make, all the while knowing that the Lord has more in store for us in this life—we have not yet arrived at our own promised land.