“when my father had read and seen many… he
did exclaim… unto the Lord…”
-it seems
to me that this is the ideal manner of scripture study and prayer: it is two way communication. We read the words of God and are
touched. We approach God in thanksgiving
and praise.
"...Great
and marvelous are thy works..."
-somehow
he got an added understanding of how the Lord works, for surely he is not referring
only to the sad and unfortunate destruction of Jerusalem as "great and marvelous
works".
Lehi just
describes, in verse 13, the terrible things to happen yet in verse 14 he
praises God’s works as great and marvelous. In fact, the focus of Lehi as expressed in
the words he uses is not about the destruction, death and suffering nor the
ugliness of rebellion and wickedness.
Consider the words used to describe his “take away” from this vision: marvelous
are thy works, thy power, goodness, mercy!
-Lehi is
either a person who delights in blood and horror (and this is obviously not the
case) or the vision which he received enabled him to see earthly events from God’s
–from a higher- perspective. We should
be very careful in understanding events on a worldly scale instead of seeing
things/events as God sees them. If we
don’t we could kick against and reject the very path God is pursuing. Is not this what people who fight against the
church out of honest objection are doing?
-our
world is filled with many of the characteristics and qualities Lehi saw: wickedness, sin, suffering, inequality, the
good suffering at the hands of the wicked, etc.
We now have a choice. With the
added perspective evidenced in Lehi’s vision and his glorifying of God we can
be weighed down by the muck we find ourselves in or we can work to achieve a perspective
like his. One that recognized that God
will not suffer those who come to Him to perish. God will deliver and reward those who wait
upon him either in this life or the next.
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