"This Was Their Finest Hour"

This is just a short post after a day filled with meetings. This past week I was reading in Alma 53 and decided to look up some words that I understood contextually but not exactly.  I've found that I often don't know the precise meaning of words and when I look them up, my understanding of the text grows.  So I pulled up Webster's 1828 dictionary online and proceeded to look up the words valiant, soberness, and stripling.  I was particularly impressed with the definition of the word stripling.  "Stripling, noun [from strip, stripe; primarily a tall slender youth, one that shoots up suddenly.]  A youth in the state of adolescence or just passing from boyhood to manhood; a lad."  The phrase that particularly stood out to me was "one that shoots up suddenly."

In the context of Alma 53, it seemed incredibly illuminating.  The context of the story is, of course, that the sons of the people of Ammon offered to fight in the place of their fathers when Helaman asked their fathers not to break their covenants that they had made.  Hearkening to the call of the prophet, those noble fathers stepped away from their desires to defend their nation with the sword in order to be obedient to the covenants that they had made long ago.  But into their place stepped their young sons who had not ever made a covenant not to fight.  Where their fathers had covenanted that they would not take up their swords--even to the laying down of their lives--their sons covenanted that they would "fight for the liberty of the Nephites" even if it was "unto the laying down of their lives" (Alma 53:17).  And so Mormon referred to them as "stripling soldiers."

It is clear that these boys were basically still adolescents.  They were not trained soldiers.  But the term stripling refers not only to their youth, but also to the fact that they had suddenly shot up to manhood.  In the hour of need, they had risen up and had become the men that their families and their nation needed them to be.  And they had done so by making covenants.  When these boys joined the army, it was not in search of adventure, nor was it with images of glory.  These boys joined the army likely expecting that just as some of the original Anti-Nephi-Lehites had needed to lay down their lives for their covenants, even so some of these boys would lay down their lives for this covenant.  War, for them, was no adventurous thrill.  They understood, as General William Tecumseh Sherman aptly stated, that "all war is hell."  They shot up suddenly, not only in terms of added responsibilities, but also in terms of wisdom, understanding, faith, and consecration beyond their years.

Each of us had moments in our lives when we need to shoot up suddenly, to rise up to the challenges placed before us as did these boys.  When these challenges come, they must and can be met if we will place our faith in the Savior and if we will devote ourselves to the covenants that we have made with Him.  With Sir Winston Churchill, "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if [our families and memories] last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

Brett