These Are My Days

Yesterday our stake president recorded a message for our stake, and in it he spoke of the words of Nephi, son of Helaman, in a time when he sorrowed over the wickedness of the Nephites. In it he lamented, “Oh, that I could have had my days in the days when my father Nephi first came out of the land of Jerusalem…. Yea, if my days could have been in those days, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my brethren.” Nephi had just spent about six years among the Nephites in the land northward who “did reject all his words” and then he came back to the land southward to find “the people in a state of such awful wickedness” with “Gadianton robbers filling the judgment-seats.” Given this, it is no wonder that he was sorrowful regarding the state of his people and seems to have longed to be in a time where the people “lived after the manner of happiness” and “believed in the warnings and the revelations of God” (2 Nephi 5:6, 27). What my stake president highlighted was what Nephi said next after expressing his frustration and longing to live at a different time: “But behold, I am consigned that these are my days” (Helaman 7:7-9). Though part of him did wish to have his circumstances changed, to be transported to a time when his current problems didn’t exist, he still was able to accept that this was not possible and that these were his days. He simply had to make the best of it and fulfil the mission appointed to him.  

Nephi’s phrase is surely an important one for all of us to similarly accept as we face challenges that we might also wish would go away. We too in faith can say: “These are my days.” Right now we might long to go back to a time when a global pandemic was not disrupting our way of life or when the values of society aligned better with the principles of the gospel or when some grave personal challenge we face didn’t exist, but we cannot and we must accept and embrace that these are our days. God did not make a mistake in sending us to the earth at this time—we surely came here for a reason and have a mission to fulfil even if these days we have are difficult ones. Instead of wishing for a different time, we can embrace the fact that God in His omniscience made no mistake when He sent us where and when He did, and that like Esther we did “come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). Though Nephi was a bit discouraged, he did embrace his role as prophet at this time and showed us how to deal with challenges: he “[poured] out his soul unto God” (Helaman 7:11). He turned to the Lord with all his heart and then he went forth and faced his challenges head on, boldly condemning the wickedness of the people to those who gathered as his tower and ultimately helping them to repent for a time when he called down a famine from heaven to humble them. Nephi showed us that even though he was frustrated by the challenges he faced, he still dealt with them and ultimately accomplished marvelous things as the Lord’s prophet among the people. We too can move forward in the work of the Lord no matter what the challenges we face are, working to fulfill the mission God has for us as we embrace the fact that these are our days.