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“Well, if this is the case,” you might say, “shouldn’t His love and mercy simply part our personal Red Seas and allow us to walk through our troubles on dry ground? Shouldn’t He send 21st-century seagulls winging in from somewhere to gobble up all of our pesky 21st-century crickets?”
The answer to such questions is “Yes, God can provide miracles instantaneously, but sooner or later we learn that the times and seasons of our mortal journey are His and His alone to direct.” He administers that calendar to every one of us individually. For every infirm man healed instantly as he waits to enter the Pool of Bethesda,3 someone else will spend 40 years in the desert waiting to enter the promised land.4 For every Nephi and Lehi divinely protected by an encircling flame of fire for their faith,5 we have an Abinadi burned at a stake of flaming fire for his.6 And we remember that the same Elijah who in an instant called down fire from heaven to bear witness against the priests of Baal7 is the same Elijah who endured a period when there was no rain for years and who, for a time, was fed only by the skimpy sustenance that could be carried in a raven’s claw.8 By my estimation, that can’t have been anything we would call a “happy meal.”
The point? The point is that faith means trusting God in good times and bad, even if that includes some suffering until we see His arm revealed in our behalf.9 That can be difficult in our modern world when many have come to believe that the highest good in life is to avoid all suffering, that no one should ever anguish over anything.10 But that belief will never lead us to “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”Share
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