Miles To Go

In verses 27-54 of the Joseph Smith History account in our Pearl of Great Price, the prophet recounted how the angel Moroni came and visited him three times on the night of September 21, 1823 and into the next morning.  At the end of this Joseph recorded, “After this third visit, he again ascended into heaven as before, and I was again left to ponder on the strangeness of what I had just experienced; when almost immediately after the heavenly messenger had ascended from me for the third time, the cock crowed, and I found that day was approaching, so that our interviews must have occupied the whole of that night” (v47).  He then got up for the day, without having slept at all it appears, and “went to the necessary labors of the day.”  But he was “so exhausted” that he couldn’t work and his father sent him back to the house.  He only made it to the fence and he described, “My strength entirely failed me, and I fell helpless on the ground, and for a time was quite unconscious of anything” (v48).  He understandably had almost no energy since he not only hadn’t slept the whole night but the visits with Moroni must have been in and of themselves spiritually draining to experience.

               What’s remarkable to me, then, is what happened next.  We don’t know how long Joseph was on the ground, but he recorded, “The first thing that I can recollect was a voice speaking unto me, calling me by name. I looked up, and beheld the same messenger standing over my head, surrounded by light as before” (v49).  Moroni again repeated everything he had told Joseph, and then he gave the exhausted young man more instructions—and they didn’t involve going to sleep.  He went and told his father in the field what had happened who said, “It was a vision from God.  Attend to it.”  So Joseph set out walking to the Hill Cumorah, which was about three miles away.  A short time previous he had collapsed in exhaustion, and now instead of going back to the house to rest he had to walk three miles to the hill (and then back again).  The thought that struck me as I pondered this account was this: you have more spiritual stamina than you think.  With a little more prodding from the angel and surely some divine aid, Joseph found that he could do more for the work of the Lord that day.  He had, quite literally, “miles to go” before he could sleep and he persevered.

               Perhaps then this is a lesson for all of us as we feel perhaps that we are out of energy or have symbolically done enough in the work of the Lord for a time.  We just might find like Joseph that the Lord sends us a spiritual prodding to not rest yet, to keep moving forward in His work.  In a revelation given to Joseph exactly nine years later to the day (on September 22, 1832), the Lord would reveal this principle about the Priesthood: “For whoso is faithful unto the obtaining these two priesthoods of which I have spoken, and the magnifying their calling, are sanctified by the Spirit unto the renewing of their bodies” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:33).  Which speaking specifically about obtaining the priesthood, I believe it applies to all of us who labor in the work of the Lord: if we seek to magnify our calling, we will be sanctified by the Spirit and our bodies will be renewed so that we have more strength and stamina than we otherwise would.  As I once heard someone say in relation to this verse, “When we serve in the kingdom we don’t get burned out; we get fired up.”  Joseph surely had the blessing of that promise on this day when he found the strength to walk for miles and meet Moroni on the Hill Cumorah.  And this would be a pattern for his whole life, continually giving more and more in the work of the Lord until he gave up life itself.  Surely the Lord will expect much from each of us in our service, but He will, as he did for Joseph, give us the strength to accomplish whatever our work is if we will likewise persevere.