I’m not going to put the whole chapter here but it’s important that you go and read it. I am going to just put it all in my own words though so you can see what I’m thinking.
Here is the Brother of Jared. We know that he was highly favored of the Lord but we also know that he had at least a 4 year struggle with prayer. We know that when He was asked to do some things He carried them out well. But we also know he was a little timid and felt as if he was weak.
But even though he was weak and had struggles and was in no way perfect, he was able to see first the finger of the Lord and then because of that the Lord showed himself fully.
Each time I have read this I’ve been surprised that the Lord seemed surprised that the Brother of Jared could see His finger. But today I saw all of the weaknesses of the Brother of Jared and it encouraged me.
I am weak. I struggle with prayer. I have things in my life that I want to improve so that I can become more like Jesus Christ. When the Lord spoke to the Brother of Jared He didn’t mention any of the issues. He only spoke about the strength of his faith.
We are all weak and have plenty of things we need to improve but how can we strengthen our faith and how can we begin to see the Lord working in our lives every day. Even if we don’t have the opportunity to see the Lord’s actual finger we can each look around and see his hands in our lives.
I think sometimes we can look back and see how things just worked out perfectly to get us where we needed to go and I also think that as we begin to do that more it becomes easier and easier to see the Lord in our lives today and soon we won’t have to look back, we will just recognize that He is there with us right now desiring to help us and to bless us.
This is not to say that the difficulties or mortality will be removed from us. In the end, the Brother of Jared still had to get into the barges and take a long frightening journey across to the ocean through storms and who even knows what else but he had the comfort of the light from the stones and the comfort of his experience with the Lord that he could look back on and be encouraged.
Just one more thing. I love the word Encourage. We can do it for others and we can feel it ourselves and it really is just building up courage to do the hard things. I am encouraged by the story of the Brother of Jared. If he can do it I know I can. Can you?
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Always Choose Charity 