Lehi In The Wilderness

I have about 20 pages left to read in this book which I borrowed from a neighbor, and wanted to recommend it to anyone who is like myself and just loves this stuff of exploring the "how?" and "where?" and "what was it like?" of the Book of Mormon Geography. I just ordered our own copy so I can highlight a few parts and have it on hand to share - it is very interesting and I should have it soon if you want to borrow it :)

So much of this book is just amazing, but one favorite part is on pages 148-149 talking about Nephi building a ship, talk about a HUGE undertaking! Not as big as Noah's, but still, you're building a boat that you are going to launch out into the unknown ocean, your life and the life of all your family, your wife, children, siblings, parents, are going to be on the line if it sinks. Not one board of this ship can be out of place, and it's got to have room for all his family and their children and families (the authors estimate 75 people (pg. 143)), room for all the food, ship repair supplies, everything you think you might need to live off of while you're out there in the ocean for who knows how long? Hello, what a huge leap of faith!

So here's my most favorite part:

"One could argue that it was no problem at all; for the Lord could have simply supplied Nephi with all the materials, knowledge and skills he needed on request. We refer to this as the 'storybook' version of Nephi's ship. It is a scenario that we think grossly misrepresents how the Lord deals with this faithful servants and significantly undervalues what Nephi actually accomplished through applied faith and works, and it also leads to a mythological rather than factual understanding of the Book of Mormon. Besides, the storybook version makes no sense. If the Lord simply wanted to supply everything for Nephi, one miracle after another, why build a ship in the first place? Why not have them walk across the ocean?

"The likelihood of the Lord-did-it-all theory seems even more doubtful if one considered the context in which the ship was built. Why would the Lord suddenly start intervening in every matter after having Nephi and his group suffer great afflictions for eight years in the desert where they nearly died and having them later almost drown in a great tempest at sea? Nephi seems to have had to suffer through each ordeal the same as any man. The sun shone just as hot on him as anyone else, the rain fell just as wet on him, and the wind blew just as hard.

"Like the desert journey, building a ship was part of Nephi's development under the hand of the Lord. He, too, would have had to learn line upon line, precept upon precept, as all who had gone before him or would go after. The Lord seems to have made a pioneer 'par excellence' of the faithful Nephi, who on his journey acquired all the basic skills necessary for the creation and settlement of an ancient society in the strangeness of the promised land. ... Nephi's journey was, we might say, his university."

As I said in this post, learning to trust God and turn our will over to Him is a journey that all of us need to have, we all need to experience our own personal Gethsemane where our will is broken, he will "wrench your very heart strings." I heard that last quote was something Joseph Smith said, just googled it, here's the quote:

"You will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God, and God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God."

- Joseph Smith

We must be tried as Abraham. It's part of this growing experience, this university education we're all receiving here on earth.