Your Goodly Land

I am constantly amazed by the rich meaning contained within the story of Lehi's family in First Nephi.  While there is much to glean from these chapters (much more than I have yet to see within them), one of my favorite lessons from First Nephi is a lesson about promised lands.

When the Lord first told Lehi to take his family and leave Jerusalem, it was a revelation in the name of self-preservation.  From what we know about this revelation, the Lord said nothing to Lehi about a promised land.  Indeed, for some of the members of this scripturally literate family (beyond just Laman and Lemuel) it must have seemed like they were being driven from the promised land, this land flowing with milk and honey that had been promised to the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The message was a clear and distinct warning that Lehi and his family were in danger and needed to flee for their lives.  What's more, the message seems to have come only to Lehi.  But Lehi and his family were obedient to this revelation and left their home and their considerable wealth to go out into the unforgiving deserts and wildernesses of the Arabian Peninsula.

Only when Nephi began praying for a private witness of his father's life-changing revelation, did the Lord begin to reassure the family that there was yet another promised land in their future.  The Lord told Nephi, "And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea, even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands" (1 Nephi 2:20)

For a time, the family called a small valley next to a river feeding into the Red Sea their home.  Though this location did not resemble any of the comforts of the family's Jerusalem homestead, this was a place of revelation and growth.  But as soon as they done everything that was required of them there, the Lord provided them with the Liahona and with the message that it was time to move forward.  So forward they went, through places of lush fruit and through locations of barren wasteland.  Indeed, at least one portion of their journey seems to have taken the family through a region now known as the Empty Quarter: a location that is wonderful if you are an oil person, but more or less worthless to the rest of humanity.  In this journey the family endured starvation, death, and more than a little bit of familial strife.  But soon enough, they had arrived at a location that Lehi and his family could only describe as "Bountiful."

After a short rest period in Bountiful, the Lord once again told the family that it was time to move forward, this time across two oceans rather than an unforgiving desert.  At the end of that dangerous journey, they arrived in the promised land, finding it to be everything that the Lord had promised.

I believe that this is exactly how the Lord deals with us and leads us to our own promised lands.  Often times, we do not know exactly what promised land we are being led to.  Lehi's family had never been to the Americas.  They had only caught brief glimpses of it in visions.  Other than that, they had to trust in the Lord's promise that it was indeed a land filled with hopes and promises for them.  And so they trusted in the Lord.

On their journey to that promised land, there were many points where those who had not caught the same vision became upset and wanted to turn back, to return to a place that they had known and been comfortable with.  In some ways I don't blame them for these feelings.  Indeed, I am almost certain that I would have spent a lot of days wanting to go back to Jerusalem with them.  And that is why I admire Lehi and Nephi so much.  In spite of all of the challenges, they went forward.  And when they came to a land Bountiful, they didn't stay there.  As tempting as it must have been, they didn't decide that their little oasis in the desert was the promised land that God had spoken of.  They knew that it was just a resting place provided by a loving Father, where they could prepare for the next leg of their journey.  And so, after resting for awhile, they built a boat and kept moving and pushing forward until the Lord told them they had arrived in the promised location and could stop.  And when they got there, they recognized it as their promised land, in spite of the fact that it was so very different from the Jerusalem that they loved.

I love this quotation by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, given at BYU in 1998.  "God's grace is sufficient!  The Lord would tell Joseph again and again through those early difficult days that, just as in the days of old, these modern children of Israel would 'be led out of bondage by power and with a stretched-out arm....Therefore let not your hearts faint...:Mine angels shall go up before you...and also my presence, and in time ye shall possess the goodly land' (D&C 103:17-20).  What goodly land?  Your goodly land.  Your promised land.  Your own little acre flowing with milk and honey.  Your future.  Your dreams.  Your destiny.  I believe that in our own individual ways, God takes us to the grove or the mountain or the temple and there shows us the wonder of what his plan is for us.  We may not see it as fully as Moses or Nephi or the brother of Jared did, but we see as much as we need to see in order to know the Lord's will for us and to know that he loves us beyond mortal comprehension."

I thank the Lord for just such occasional glimpses and visions of the promised land that He has prepared for me.  I pray that I might be able to journey towards it with the same faith that moved Lehi and Nephi toward their promised land.  In the end, we all hope for, have faith in, and move towards the same "better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God" (Ether 12:4) where we will "sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out" (Helaman 3:30).

Brett