I Will Also Be Your Light

Last night I had the opportunity to watch the deacons build a fire and to enjoy a few minutes standing around it in the dark cold evening. As I did so I thought of these verses from Nephi: “For the Lord had not hitherto suffered that we should make much fire, as we journeyed in the wilderness; for he said: I will make thy food become sweet, that ye cook it not; And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led” (1 Nephi 17:12-12). During their eight years traveling in the wilderness, the family of Lehi had not built many fires or often cooked their food, perhaps because the Lord was protecting them from being seen by others. There also may not have been much fuel to cook with as they traveled across a barren desert. But the Lord had said to them as they journeyed that they didn’t need fire because He would be their light and cook their food for them if they would just keep His commandments. Surely His promise is the same to us today: if we will just keep His commandments as best we can, He will guide us towards our promise land and make up for the things that we don’t have. No matter what we lack—whether fire or food or money or talents or anything else—He promises us that if we will just keep His commandments then He will prepare the way before us. So as we light literal fires when we camp or roast marshmallows as I did with the deacons, I hope we remember that our greatest light comes from Jesus Christ who will prepare our path in life as we keep His commandments.

                One of the commandments today that the Lord has given us is the payment of tithing. I believe that not only does the Lord “open [us] the windows of heaven, and pour [us] out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it” when we pay tithing, but as He said to Nephi, He prepares the way before us and guides us towards our promised land as we our obedient to this commandment. My wife and I have always paid our tithing, and as I look back on our lives, I can see that the Lord has guided us people and places and experiences that our family needed. Though I don’t have any stories of a particular time when I paid tithing and I noticed something happen immediately because of it, I know that as we have tried to keep this commandment through the years we have been given—like Lehi and his family traveling in the wilderness—all that we needed. Several years ago, we were contemplating moving to be close to the elementary school that we had started taking our oldest daughter to. The school had French immersion but it was ten minutes away from where we lived and challenging for my wife to go back and forth to constantly while taking care of little ones. The year prior we had been debating whether or not to enroll in this school, and because of some resistance from our daughter we had in the end chosen not to. I had told this to our family friend Sister Parry, an elder widow of great wisdom and spirituality, and she called me the next day telling me how the Spirit had been working on her all night and told me she thought we needed to reconsider our decision. We did, and we changed our minds and put our oldest in the program (despite her objections). Well, several months later after driving every day to and from the school (much of which she was sick and pregnant), my wife saw a house go up for sale across the street from the school. Of course this looked very appealing to her given the thought of taking our kids to and from the school every day for many years to come. And so, we ended up putting an offer on that house, but it was rejected because they had another one. Around this time, we took a trip in the spring to see Sister Parry in Eugene, Oregon. As I was sitting in her house, I got a text from the person who had rejected our offer and he told me that two houses down—also across from the school—his friend was selling his house and gave me his number. Then I looked at my phone and also got some information about something that had happened at work which would make it possible financially to make the move at that time. Both of these took place in the house of the person who had encouraged us in the first place to send our kids to this school—and now the Lord was preparing the way and making it possible by giving us a house across the street. We were moved in there in less than two months and have been there ever since. I believe that the Lord indeed guided us because we were trying to keep His commandments and had kept the law of tithing. I have found the promise recorded by Nephi to be true: “And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them” (1 Nephi 17:3).