If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived.
Jeffrey R. Holland The Inconvienient Messiah, 1982
Have the Lord’s promises to you ever felt painfully out of reach?
Have you ever felt that your current circumstances don’t match what you expected- despite your righteous choices?
If so, the Old Testament has a message for you: remain faithful and God will make something beautiful out of your ironies.
Consider the lives of the ancients:
- Sarah was promised by the Lord to be the “mother of nations” (Genesis 17:16), yet she was barren for almost four decades.
- In addition, Sarah was required to tell both Pharoah and Abimalech that she was unmarried, and as a result was nearly taken into each of these rulers’ harems.
- Abraham, foreordained to be the Father of the Covenant, had an apostate father who tried to have him sacrificed to false gods.
- Later, the Lord commanded Abraham to sacrifice his own birthright son, whom he had waited nearly forty years to receive.
- Before her marriage to Isaac, Rebekah was blessed that she would be “the mother of thousands of millions” (Genesis 24:60)–yet she too was infertile–for twenty long years.
- Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all endured times of famine-the extreme scarcity of food-despite being promised abundant temporal and spiritual blessings from the Lord.
- Jacob was promised seed without number-but was tricked into marrying a wife that he did not choose.
- Jacob was also promised that the Lord would be with him, but later found himself staring down the seemingly ominous advance of Esau and his 400 men, who appeared intent on destroying his precious posterity.
- Joseph righteously dreamed inspired dreams, yet was sold into slavery by those who should have been most loyal to him-his own brothers.
- Later, when Joseph demonstrated exemplary chastity and virtue, he found himself imprisoned, maligned, and falsely accused.
- Over 400 years later when Moses finally mustered the courage to go in to Pharoah as the Lord had commanded him, Pharoah responded by abusing the Israelites and increasing their workload-causing both them and Moses to sink in “anguish of spirit” Exodus 6:9.
- Moses led the Israelites through the parted Red Sea on dry ground to discover that they turned on him when they got hungry and thirsty-lamenting to the Lord that the people “be almost ready to stone me” (Exodus 17:4).
The ancients were not spared bitter ironies. How could it be so? For their mission was to foreshadow and testify of the Messiah, who was foreordained to suffer the greatest ironies in eternity.
As Joseph Smith taught, the Savior “suffered greater sufferings, and was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be,” (Lectures on Faith, Lecture 5, paragraph 2).
As disciples of the Savior, we too will be called to pass through ironies-situations and circumstances that seem utterly incongruous to what we expected. Ironies in our day include anxiety, depression, singleness, infertility, loss, disease, and chronic pain-just to name a few.
Painful as these situations are, the scriptures teach us that if we remain faithful, in time the Lord will transform our bitter ironies into something beautiful. And even more than that, He will bless us with what is infinitely more than “just” or “fair”.
- Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob–each tried with their own complex ironies now “sit upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods” (D&C 132:37).
- Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel–each of whom were once barren–now have seed “as innumerable as the stars” (D&C 132:30). They are known and honored by their posterity as the mothers of the covenant-the mothers of the House of Israel.
- Because of his faithfulness, Joseph of Egypt-though once stripped of his birthright robe, could not be stripped of his birthright blessings and is now the Father of a mighty “righteous branch” (Genesis 50:24), including Ephraim, Manasseh, Nephi, and Joseph Smith.
- Moses-who was constantly tried by the very people he sought to lead-returned to earth in glory and majesty to bestow the keys of the gathering upon Joseph Smith in the Kirtland Temple (D&C 110:11).
Though excruciating, ironies are temporary when we remain faithful. If we can but “hold on” (D&C 122:9) we will, in time, see the fulfilment of God’s promises to us.
For as the Lord said anciently, He also says today: “Fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee,” (Genesis 26:24).
