Ether 2:25

25 And behold, I prepare you against these things; for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come. Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?

I have read this verse so many times and when the Lord says “What will ye that I should prepare for you…” what I have always seen the meaning as has been that the Lord wants me to do some preparation first before He will bless me. That he wants me to learn to make decisions on my own and that He is teaching me little by little to become more like Him in a similar way to what we do with our own children. We want them to work things through without us immediately giving the answer. When the kid comes to you and wants you to do the math problem for them and you stand by their side and lead them through it or if a toy breaks and you ask them to try and fix it before you step in. I think Heavenly Father does that with us a lot and so I still think it’s a good way to look at the meaning of this verse.

But, today when I read it I had a different thought. He says that the trip is going to be a little frightening and there are going to be a lot of things we aren’t prepared for expecting and that we can’t do it alone without the preparation the Lord has made for us. And because he knows that it is going to be a hard journey for us He asks “what will ye that ye may have light when you are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?” He asks what can he do for us that would help us in the hardest parts? He wants to bless us. He wants us to remember him. Like a mother who makes a child a special blanket to hold in the night while he sleeps to comfort Him, the Lord wants us to have that comfort. He wants to bring that light into our lives in the dark times.

Photo by Hakan Erenler from Pexels

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