Seek Miracles

I have been traveling this week with my family and on Wednesday morning we packed up from one place where we had been staying and traveled to a new location. We were renting a small home for a few days, and that morning my son threw his football on the roof and it got stuck about halfway up. It was way beyond reach of any of us and I could not find any usable ladder to get it down. I figured we would probably have to just leave it there. But with about fifteen minutes before check out, as we were scrambling to get everything out and in the car in order to leave on time, I felt like I really needed to get it down. This was mostly to help my son who was having a bad morning for other reasons. With a prayer in my heart I walked around the house trying to see if there was any way to get on the roof. I couldn’t see any. I also couldn’t find any other ball to throw up and dislodge the football. It seemed quite hopeless. But then as I walked around the side of the house I noticed an old two-by-four there on the ground. It was probably about fifteen feet long and had probably been there for quite some time. I picked it up, spider webs and all, and lifted it up on the roof. It was just long enough to reach the football and I easily dislodged it and it fell from the roof. It was a miracle to me—that random piece of wood just happened to be there, just the right length to perform the needed task. I was able to use the football that afternoon with my son in a park as we traveled and it helped him get through some of the challenges he was having that day. After this experience I thought of President Nelson’s invitation from this most recent general conference: “Seek and expect miracles.” This small experience wasn’t some grand thing, but it was miraculous to me and a witness that the Lord is in the detail of our lives.

               President Nelson’s message was that we can have miracles in our lives like in times of old. He used this scripture from Moroni to teach this principle: “And now, O all ye that have imagined up unto yourselves a god who can do no miracles, I would ask of you, have all these things passed, of which I have spoken? Has the end come yet? Behold I say unto you, Nay; and God has not ceased to be a God of miracles…. And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.” He promised us that we could have miracles in our lives by following these additional words from Moroni: “Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth” (Mormon 9:15, 19, 21). Moroni’s promise was not limited to a certain group of people or period of time or geographic location; rather, all of God’s children can have His miracles in their lives if they will believe in Christ and pray to the Father in His name with faith.

Most of us probably feel, though, at times like Gideon in the Old Testament who prayed these words when he saw his people in bondage to the Midianites: “Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites” (Judges 6:13). He was looking back upon the great miracles that Jehovah had performed in bringing forth the children of Israel out of Egypt, and he wondered why similar miracles were not performed for his people who were in bondage. In the same way it is perhaps not hard to get discouraged when we read of ancient peoples and prophets in the scriptures who witnessed mighty miracles and wonder when the Lord will deliver us from our own challenges. We hear of stories from our own pioneers with miraculous quail providing food and seagulls eating crickets, even as we yearn for these to figuratively show up for us as well. I know that as we seek the Lord with all our heart He will hear and help us, even if the miracle does not always come in the expected way. Gideon ultimately did obtain the miracle he sought for from the Lord as his people were delivered through him. And so can we. President Nelson summarized: “Do the spiritual work to seek miracles. Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith. I promise that you can experience for yourself that Jesus Christ ‘giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.’”