Led And Preserved

¹“My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep.” (2 Nephi 4:20). There are two kinds of afflictions that we may face in this life, and the help and support that Heavenly Father offers us is different for each one. Sometimes we are wandering through a wilderness. We are ultimately in control of our fate in this kind of affliction. There may be only a few good paths through the wilderness that will lead to food and water and shelter, and assuredly the Lord will lead us to those safe paths, but it is up to us to choose which path we will take. This often includes suboptimal or downright horrible paths that can carry us into real danger. Nephi and his family experienced this as they wandered through the desert. When they gave heed and diligence to the Lord’s guidance, they were led through the more fertile parts of the wilderness. When they refused to let the Lord lead them, they suffered and starved and even perished. Contrast this with Nephi’s experience on the waters of the great deep. The only choice that is really left open when we’re on a boat being tossed around by a days-long storm is the choice to hang on for dear life and hope that God loves us enough to preserve us until the storm passes. If we are struggling to see the hand of the Lord in our lives, we might want to determine if we’re going through more of a wilderness type of affliction or a waters of the great deep type of situation. Finding the right path through the wilderness may push us to the edge of our limits, but it will not go past them. There is a correct path and if we are willing to work with God, He will lead us through it. But it will still require effort and faith and diligence on our part. We can’t be in the desert and demand that God just carry us through it like He might if we were in the middle of the storm-tossed sea. And by the same token, if we are hanging on for dear life and trying to keep our head above water, to the point that there’s just not a lot of control or agency in our lives in this particular moment, then maybe we need to just let go of our need to feel in control and to not sit and ruminate about how we could have or should have taken this or that other path or beat ourselves up because we can’t figure out how to solve this problem on our own. When the wind is ripping our sails to rags and the waves are towering forty or fifty feet overhead, we really don’t have any options. We can’t do anything on our own in such situations and all we can do is rely on the Lord to preserve us. The more that we can learn about our Heavenly Father and the more that we can put our trust in Him, the easier it will be for us to recognize the times when we can and ought to be led by God, and the times when we must simply be preserved by Him and are as powerless as a boat in a hurricane. We will face many wildernesses and great deeps throughout our life. I hope that we will have the faith to be led when it is time to be led, and trust in the Lord when it is time to be preserved.