Sunday Eve Post

I just had one of these experiences that come frequently when I am reminded that God hears me and the scriptures speak to me. I am not sure if I learned from watching my mother or if it was innate but ever since I was a child I knew, when in distress, to find a quiet place to pray. I'd shut the door and kneel on the floor by the sink in the bathroom while the storm raged between my battling parents or whenever I was scared or worried. I learned early that God hears me and that feeling or belief has carried me. From the time I received specific instructions as clear as a voice in my mind when I was in a perilous place at age 8, to the time my simple two word prayer of "Help me!" as a missionary was immediately answered, to the time early intervention for autism was found after many heart-felt prayers, to now-- prayer is often my first impulse followed by opening the scriptures for answers.

Tonight was one of these moments of quiet distress when first I prayed with tears begging answers. I took up the Book of Mormon still in distress and let it fall open to Mosiah 7:18-19 and read:

"...notwithstanding our many strugglings, which have been in vain; yet I trust there remaineth an effectual struggle to be made."

That probably is meaningless to you but to me it is God telling me He Hears Me. It is an answer.

Then I read:

"Therefore, lift up your heads, and rejoice, and put your trust in God, in that God who was the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; and also, that God who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, and caused that they should walk through the Red Sea on dry ground, and fed them with manna that they might not perish in the wilderness"

And I went back up to verse 18 and read what I had at first skipped:

"O ye, my people, lift up your heads and be comforted; for behold, the time is at hand, or is not far distant, when we shall no longer be in subjection to our enemies" and I was comforted.

It is curious to me that these verses are written about the people who followed Zeniff, who was deceived and did bring his people into bondage. Verses 29-33 are interesting to me.

Prayer and the scriptures are my anchor. I wouldn't know how to navigate this life without them.