He Will Keep The Feet Of His Saints

¹“He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed.” (1 Samuel 2: 9-10). We often read in the scriptures of faithful saints and prophets who nevertheless felt as if they were “compassed about” by sins and temptations which easily beset them. Truthfully, we often feel this way ourselves. It is as if the straight and narrow path which leads back to our Heavenly Father is crawling and writhing with hundreds of snakes. We can’t put a foot anywhere, it seems, without being in danger of getting bitten. How does the Lord expect us to possibly get through this path filled with snakes unscathed? The short answer: He doesn’t. When the Lord cast out Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, He warned them that the serpent would have the power to bruise their heels. There is just no getting around it. With snakes everywhere we step, our feet are going to get bitten and bruised. But that’s not the whole story. He also promised Adam and Eve, and, by extension, all of us, that we would have the power to crush the snake’s head. Getting bitten by a snake is no laughing matter. Even if we are bitten only on our heels, that poison is going to make its way up to our heart and kill us if we don’t do something. But the Lord has promised to those who follow Him, “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (Mark 16:18). “And now, my brethren, I have spoken plainly that ye cannot err. And as the Lord God liveth that brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt, and gave unto Moses power that he should heal the nations after they had been bitten by the poisonous serpents, if they would cast their eyes unto the serpent which he did raise up before them, and also gave him power that he should smite the rock and the water should come forth; yea, behold I say unto you, that as these things are true, and as the Lord God liveth, there is none other name given under heaven save it be this Jesus Christ, of which I have spoken, whereby man can be saved. (2 Nephi 25:20). Thanks to the power of Christ’s Atonement, if we will look to Him then the very worst that the snakes can do is bruise our heels. Their poison will not harm us so long as we keep our eyes fixed on the Savior. It is easy and understandable to get overwhelmed if we look down at our feet and see all of the dozens and hundreds of snakes that lie in wait before us. If we try to keep going forward on our own strength, the combined venom of all of those snakes will surely kill us. But if we treat each temptation as a sharp but nonlethal reminder to look back up at our Savior Jesus Christ, Who has been lifted up before us like the bronze serpent of old, then the poison of those snake bites will be eliminated. The Lord will keep our feet and heal us each and every time that we look back up to Him. The sting from snake bites will probably never fully go away, just like we will always face new and old temptations and challenges, but if we keep the snakes down at our feet where we can crush their heads rather than scooping them up so that they can coil themselves around us and poison us over and over, and if we just keep looking back up to the Savior immediately after we’ve been bitten again, then we will only ever feel the briefest tingle of venom before the Love of Christ casts it out.