Losing The Way

¹“And it came to pass that there arose a mist of darkness; yea, even an exceedingly great mist of darkness, insomuch that they who had commenced in the path did lose their way, that they wandered off and were lost.” (1 Nephi 8:23). In Lehi’s vision, there is a straight and narrow path that leads to the Tree of Life. Along this path there is an iron rod that can lead and guide those along the path. If the Tree of Life is the goal, why might any ever wander off of the path and lose their way? I imagine that in some cases, we never meant to leave the path. Some momentary distraction causes us to let go of the Iron Rod, but the mists of darkness are so thick that we get a little turned around and we think we’re heading back to the path but we miss it entirely. But I think in other cases, we’ve been dutifully holding onto the iron rod and pressing forward through a mist so thick that we can’t see our own hand in front of our eyes, and this mist has been causing us to slip and stumble, and it’s causing us to get all damp and clammy, and it feels hard to breathe, and we’ve been struggling our way through it for so long, holding onto the rod, doing what we are supposed to do, and we can’t take it anymore. We have to get away from this mist. The problem is, the mist is completely around the iron rod. So, it seems like our only option is to abandon the rod and the path and try to find some way out of this mist, because we’ve been pressing forward for what seems like forever with no break from the mist, so we have to look elsewhere. When times get hard, it can be easy to see that our covenants and our commitment to the Gospel, rather than a shield against unbearable suffering, are instead a magnet that attracts trouble. If striving to live as Christ would have us live is not only not stopping the bad but actively bringing it on, then getting as far away from the straight and narrow path, with its seemingly perpetual mists of darkness, seems like the only option. Many of us are adverse to extended periods of blind faith, and blind faith is exactly what we get if we hold fast to the rod when we are surrounded by mists of darkness. Our Heavenly Father permits the mists of darkness to descend upon all of His children. These mists are temporary, although they seem to linger longer in the paths of some than for others. If we leave the straight and narrow behind and wander onto forbidden paths, we will still experience mists of darkness. The beautiful thing about the straight and narrow path and the iron rod is that they are straight and narrow and solid. If we are completely untethered, we may end up wandering in those mists forever. But if we stay on the path, then we know that it will eventually lead to the Tree of Life and the Love of God, whose piercing rays of brilliant light will cast out and boil away the mists of darkness forever.