DWELLER OF A TENT

In the first book of his record, Nephi mentions four different times that his father lived in a tent (1 Nephi 2:15, 1 Nephi 9:1, 1 Nephi 10:16, 1 Nephi 16:6). Considering how laborious engraving of the golden plates was, one cannot help but ask why would Nephi want to bother to impress upon us this minor and seemingly insignificant detail. Obviously, it wasn't insignificant to Nephi. Besides being a God fearing man, in 600 BC, his father Lehi was a rich and resourceful merchant successfully building a nest egg for his old age. By all accounts his future promised a life of ease and luxury but God had other plans. He revealed to Lehi what was coming to Jerusalem, a city whose wickedness was so great that God did not only send one prophet to call its' inhabitants to repentance but as many as seven. Lehi was one of those prophets. When he came perilously close to losing his life, he gathered his family, fled his home and found himself in the desert, living in a tent. So why Nephi's focus on the tent? Obviously it was to highlight the contrast of his father's cushy life (1 Nephi 2:4) on the outskirts of Jerusalem with his life after he had chosen to sacrifice everything to live according to God's will. As a result of this sacrifice,  he swapped his riches for a tent but he saved his family.

In Lecture Sixth of the Lectures On Faith, Joseph Smith points out that the ancient saints were able to endure any fate and any loss and even suffer most horrid deaths because they had the assurance that they were pursuing a course which was agreeable to the will of God. He stresses several times that those who have this knowledge have "the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation" (Lecture Sixth, para 7). What did this kind of faith do for Lehi? It enabled him to boldly complete one of the most demanding and difficult journeys, across waters he had never before travelled to a land he had never before seen. When we come to the point of such faith, we do not mind living in a tent because we then believe God when He says: "if you give up 'this little', I will give you 'this much'." In simple terms, if you sacrifice your all here and now, I will later give you something much better, even life eternal.

Once again, 'a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation' (Lecture Sixth, para 7). In the category of 'all things' required of us as a sacrifice would fall not only temporal goods but our self will, desires, appetites, intentions and agendas for personal gain in the form of power, honour and worldly praise and self advancement. Joseph Smith calls those who sacrifice all in pursuit of a life that is in accordance with God's will 'the favourites of heaven'. Imagine being one of God's favourites......

Perhaps when we have sacrificed all, joyfully, to pursue a life conducive to the will of God,  the power of faith will be so great within us that we will be like that faithful, bold and resourceful merchant from the outskirts of Jerusalem who stood on the banks of the Red Sea, with no ship in sight, proclaiming: 

"I have obtained a land of promise" (1 Nephi 5:5).

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Lehi Examines Plates by Joseph Franklin Brickey)