First-Person Faith

I don't think the ward I live in has the corner of all hard things in this world.  But we do have our share. . . .since we moved here nearly 7 years ago, we have had 17 funerals (if we've counted right), many ward members have lost siblings and parents to death, 2 home fires, some unemployment, a lot of sicknesses and cancer, depression. . .  just a name a few.  This morning much of this was weighing heavily on me.  The thought came to me to look up a talk my sister Katie loved.  It is called First-person Faith in God by Elder Ronald J. Hammond given at a BYU-I devotional.  It was just the refresher that I needed.

Here is a snippet:

The scriptures are filled with experiences wherein prophets and disciples struggled to develop first-person faith in God in the face of stifling unknowns. How much easier it would have been had they known, while in the furnace, how things would eventually turn out.

For example, look with me down the long corridor of time. We see Father Abraham21 preparing, as God had commanded, to sacrifice his only begotten son, Isaac – hot tears matching the heat of the fiery trial. Then, as he raises the sacrificial dagger, you and I call to him down through the millennia, “Abraham, O Abraham, don’t worry. It’s all going to be just fine! See, I have the book! I know how this story ends! Abraham, hang in there, don’t give up!” But Abraham, in the thick of developing first-person faith cannot, must not, hear us. It must be just Abraham and God. Then, after the fiery trial of his faith, the miracle occurs, we sigh with relief, and Abraham becomes not only the father of millions, but the father of the faithful as well.

 God is in charge.  His plan is perfect.  Doubt not; fear not; Only believe.