Lessons to be Found in the Sacred Grove

               Today as I walked from class to class my mind was was brought to reflect upon the experience Joseph Smith had in the sacred grove and I’d like to write some of thoughts that have entered my mind.
               In a beautiful spring morning, in the year of 1820 Joseph Smith entered a grove of trees near his home with the intent to inquire of God what he should do. This small act of faith led to one event that would change history. As Joseph knelt in prayer he said he was “seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to a sudden destruction.” Many times in our lives we will be trying our hardest to do what is right and we will be “seized upon” by a power which will entirely overcome us. Trials enter into our lives and they seem to entirely overcome us because we are mortals and cannot see through God’s eyes. Everyone deals with trials differently and no one’s trials are less severe than another because they are tailor made for us. I find it interesting that the power that consumes Joseph “bind[s] his tongue so that he [could not] speak”. When trials come we often turn to prayer to ask God for deliverance. The Bible Dictionary says,
               “as soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part. Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are bought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we an obtain them. Prayer is a form of work and is and appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.
               Often we forget those precious truths. Often we pray for deliverance and try to change the will of God when we should pray for the strength to endure the trials we have been given. Often we forget that God is our Father and knows best.
               “exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction- not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being- at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head….” God’s timing of deliverance often comes in man’s time of discomfort. God often allows us to do everything that we can before he will intervene. In Joseph’s case he felt as if he “was ready to sink into despair and abandon [himself] to destruction” and at this moment of “great alarm” he said he saw a pillar of light and he was delivered from the enemy which held him bound. Often it is the same with us, we feel that we are about to abandon ourselves unto destruction and that we cannot do it anymore. In these times we need to have faith that God will deliver us from our trials for he will!
               The first word that God then spoke after centuries of silence was that of a personal name…. “Joseph” …. So it is with us, if we feel that God has been silent for far too long and does not listen to your prayers there will come a time where that silence will be broken and he will speak a personal name… your name. He knows us individually and loves us more than we can understand. Not all prayers are answered in the way Joseph’s was and we will find ourselves disappointed if we wait for these answers. God will answer our prayers but it will not be in our way it will be in his way and in his time. We are expected to wait and believe that God will answer our prayers. He loves us and He will answer our prayers. So in the times where we believe the heavens are shut and God isn’t listening I promise the light will stream through and answers will be given. Isaiah wrote “and therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you… that he may have mercy upon you… blessed are all they that wait for him…. Thou shalt weep no more: he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee. And though the Lord will give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, this is the way, walk ye in it…”

Symbolism in Trials and the Parable of the Plowman

          I felt that I should write a little bit of the things that have weighed heavily upon my mind as of late. Nephi said in the second book of Nephi in fourth chapter in the fifteenth verse “upon these I write the things of my soul” I wish to do the same. First, to express my own thoughts and express gratitude which as of late I haven’t shown. Second, for those who may be struggling to find answers to questions and doubts that have weighed heavily on their mind. As I write I ask for your patience as I am weak in writing. If you do read my words I wish the spirit will speak to you more than my words do for he is the true teacher.
          In the twenty-eighth chapter of Isaiah the Lord inspires Isaiah to write the Parable of the Plowman. I will like to make attempt to describe to what I believe these symbols mean.
          “Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? Doth he open and break the clods of his ground? When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cumin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.”
          God instructed the plowman how to plant the fitches, cumin, barley and rye. Each crop has its own way of planting each requiring a different conditions and locations in the field. Cumin and fitches were planted in rows in the middle of the field, the Barley was planted in the wet and marshy places, and the rye was planted on the outside providing protection for the rest of the crop. As read these word and tried figure out what they really mean the thought dawned on me that God is planting us in this life in specific families, specific situations, specific times. God knows what we need. He knows how to plant us and where to plant us. Corrie ten Boom said “Every experience God gives us; every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.” God knows you individually! There have been many times in my life where I have questioned that beautiful truth, but no matter how much we doubt truth never changes. If we doubt in law of gravity and choose to test it by jumping off of a cliff we will soon find out that the truth of Gravity is real. Now, in my opinion, realizing that gravity is real is a lot easier than knowing God loves you especially in times of trial. Knowing that God loves you doesn’t always make a trial seem easier but it does give us hope. Elder Jeffery R. Holland said, in his talk an high priest of good things to come, speaking to those who struggle,
          “Cling to your faith. Hold on to your hope. “Pray always, and be believing.” 5 Indeed, as Paul wrote of Abraham, he “against [all] hope believed in hope” and “staggered not … through unbelief.” He was “strong in faith” and was “fully persuaded that, what [God] had promised, he was able … to perform.” 6Even if you cannot always see that silver lining on your clouds, God can, for He is the very source of the light you seek. He does love you, and He knows your fears. He hears your prayers. He is your Heavenly Father, and surely He matches with His own the tears His children shed. In spite of this counsel, I know some of you do truly feel at sea, in the most frightening sense of that term. Out in troubled waters, you may even now be crying with the poet:
                    It darkens. I have lost the ford.
                    There is a change on all things made.
                    The rocks have evil faces, Lord,
                    And I am [sore] afraid. 7
          No, it is not without a recognition of life’s tempests but fully and directly because of them that I testify of God’s love and the Savior’s power to calm the storm. Always remember in that biblical story that He was out there on the water also, that He faced the worst of it right along with the newest and youngest and most fearful. Only one who has fought against those ominous waves is justified in telling us—as well as the sea—to “be still.” Only one who has taken the full brunt of such adversity could ever be justified in telling us in such times to “be of good cheer.” Such counsel is not a jaunty pep talk about the power of positive thinking, though positive thinking is much needed in the world. No, Christ knows better than all others that the trials of life can be very deep and we are not shallow people if we struggle with them. But even as the Lord avoids sugary rhetoric, He rebukes faithlessness and He deplores pessimism. He expects us to believe!
          No one’s eyes were more penetrating than His, and much of what He saw pierced His heart. Surely His ears heard every cry of distress, every sound of want and despair. To a degree far more than we will ever understand, He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”
Trials have a way of slowing time down and making it seem that you are abandoned and that God is not listening. My mom once told me something that I have never forgotten she said, “Even the teacher is silent during the test.” Which brings me to the second half of the Parable of the Plowman.
“For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cumin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff and the cumin with a rod. Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen.”
          The harvest of each crop is specific for its needs. The cumin and the fitches were beaten out with a staff or a road because it required little effort harvest. When harvesting barley, a different method of harvesting was used. The most common instrument used in threshing was the threshing board, also sometimes referred to as threshing sledge. Usually it consisted of two connected boards studded with sharp stones. These stones can be replaced as they are worn. In modern times iron pieces or saws were also used. A threshing board was then hauled by a donkey, horse, or a cow with its handler sitting or standing on the threshing sledge to add weight. Just as God instructed the plowman on how to plow his field so he knows how to “harvest” us.
          God knows what trials we need. Just as the threshing sledge is used to harvest the barley so are trials used to purify us. The cumin was only harvested by hand because if a threshing sledge was used it would ruin the crop where as if a rod was used to harvest the barley it would have lead to little result. Trials are not easy and in fact require a lot of pressure. As we ponder the symbolism and imagery of the savior as he suffered the atonement in the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane means olive press and like olives were pressed by a large rock in order to make olive oil so the savior was literally pressed upon by the sins and afflictions of the world until he bled from every pore. Trials are meant to require something of the soul. How else are we supposed to gain a testimony of the Savior’s ultimate sacrifice? There is no other way. God allows trials to happen to use to help us to grow. Now sometimes we may feel that the trials that God has given us are too much to bear and often we wish that we more like the cumin and our trials were less severe but remember God knows us best and he knows what we need although we may feel we need something different. Trials may be a result of our own mistakes, the mistakes of others or sometimes we just have trials because this is a fallen world and there is “opposition in all things”. Whatever the reason is we are expected by the Lord to take those trials, learn from them and become more like him.
          For those that feel that the storms and waves of life are too much have hope and believe that God knows you! The first word that God spoke after centuries of silence was that of a personal name…. “Joseph” …. So it is with us, if we feel that God has been silent for far too long and does not listen to your prayers there will come a time where that silence will be broken and he will speak a personal name… your name. He knows us individually and loves us more than we can understand.