Faith and Rejoicing

If you will turn with me to 1 Nephi 5:5 you will find Lehi attempting to placate Sariah. He says,

"But behold, I have obtained a land of promise, in the which things I do rejoice."

This is fascinating, because at this point in time the situation is as follows:

• Lehi and his family have been forced to flee Jerusalem because the good citizens there have been plotting to kill him.
• He has left to rot considerable lands and wealth.
• Two of his sons think he's a hopeless lunatic.
• His wife thinks he's a deranged incompetent.
• The son that has confidence in him is away on a dangerous mission with the rest of his sons. They are long overdue to return. Chances are they have been eaten by wild animals or Laban.
• He's off in the wild with nothing but a tent, some pack animals, and a bitter, mutinous wife.

Circumstances are, in a word, grim. Certainly they are not promising. And he's rejoicing in having a land of promise? He can't even see it from where he's standing. It will be 10 years of travel before he and his family land there. In those 10 years, his family will march along the brink of starvation, his eldest sons will wax homicidal toward him and other family members, they'll get lost at sea, and the ship will nearly sink in a monstrous storm - the ship that no one knows how to build yet. And Lehi is just happy to know that they're headed somewhere nice. Might this be an extraordinary example of faith? I think so.

So, then. Faith now and then must ignore all available evidence, all salient indications of what may be expected, and instead anticipate things which are manifestly impossible. Also we see that some are able to rejoice even when life is wedged in the U-bend of the toilet. Lehi shows that if you can somehow look beyond barren likelihoods to the land of promise, you can be happy even on the precipice of despair, defeat, and aborted dreams. Lehi probably didn't know what was in store for him in the short run. He may not have anticipated the hunger, the mutiny, and the decade of worn shoes, dusty clothes, raw meat dinners, and cranky women. But he believed that what was at the end was worth having, and that it would be given him exactly as described. He made the gamble we call faith, to trust in things you can't understand and expect things you've never seen because God made a promise.

Perhaps that's what faith requires: believe that you will receive if you obey, but more than that believe what you are promised is worth more than what you're giving up. Lehi had that kind of faith. And Lehi was right. He saw the land, he walked there, he watched his children grow and begin to spread over a landscape rich in everything they would ever need. He had enough faith to follow until he could see for himself how great cause he had to rejoice. More astounding, he had enough faith to rejoice long before the soil was under his feet and the scent around his face. He rejoiced in rags, in danger, in desperation, in hunger.

Why should we, who are much more comfortable, not do the same? The promises given us as Latter-day Saints are extravagant. We are commanded to take ourselves and our families to a land where we are surrounded by light, the people we love, and an excess of joy. We're told that it is a place desirable above all others, and that there we will be happy, fulfilled, and exhilarated at what is before us. Do we believe it? Do we have faith, as Lehi did, that if it has been promised to us the impossible will somehow be made possible? If we believe all this, if we know these things, then the barren reaches that sometimes stretch from horizon to horizon need not blind us. We can look beyond them to the promised land, and rejoice in the wilderness.