job.

This is something that a friend shared with me while I was on my mission and it was brought to my memory yesterday during church.

Job is a classic example of trials and suffering. And faithfulness to God. 

But I want to talk about how Job is an example of God's promise of eternal families:

This is what Job has before everything is taken away from him:

7,000 sheep

3,000 camels

500 yoke of oxen

500 she asses

7 sons and 3 daughters (10 kids)

He then loses every single one of those things. His kids are killed when a house collapses and fire and other things consume his flocks.

For the next 40 chapters Job stays faithful to the Lord while even his closest friends counsel him to curse the Lord.

Then in chapter 42:10 it says, "And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave job twice as much as he had before." (emphasis added).

It then numbers what the Lord gives him after he's proven faithful:

14,000 sheep

6,000 camels

1,000 yoke of oxen

1,000 she asses

7 sons and 3 daughters (10 kids)

You don't have to be a genius at math to see that 10x2 does not equal 10. If the Lord said he was going to bless him with twice as much as he had before, and he only has 10 more kids . . . something appears to be wrong. The math checks out on all the other things.

The only logical explanation is this; Job's first 10 children + his second 10 children = 20, or double what he had before. Ergo . . . his first 10 kids are still his. Even after death. They are an eternal family. After this life, he has 20 kids. The Lord fulfilled his promise to Job and we can see that families are eternal.

Thank you Spencer Hadley for showing me this years ago.

fruit snacks.

At my internship we've got snacks. I get hungry. So I make a regular trip to where the fruit snacks are. This is a Cosco size box of Tree Top fruit snacks, the healthy . . . ier kind. I probably ate 30+ bags of those little guys from the first box we had. And for the entire box I got strawberry maybe 4 times. I really like strawberry. Meanwhile the customer service girl got multiple strawberries in every one she opened.

I felt cursed. All I wanted were strawberries. I barely even got oranges, the second best flavor.

Well. We eventually ran out and recently we got a new box.

The odds have been much more in my favor:

Of the four packages I've opened I've gotten 8 strawberries. Yes, I counted.

So what does this have to do with anything?

1. When blessings come, they often come in greater volume than we expected. And often when we're not expecting them.

2. Just because we've had bad fortune with something, or it hasn't been yielding results, it doesn't mean that can't change. Sometimes you just need a new box. Sometimes a small change is enough.

the time is at hand.

This morning I was struck by what I read in the first chapter of 3rd Nephi.

Basically, a prophet named Samuel had prophesied that in 5 years there would be signs on the American continent of Christ's birth in Bethlehem.

There was a small group of believers holding out hope for those signs. Meanwhile the scumbags of the city were planning a day that they would kill all the believers if there hadn't been any signs.

Nephi, the prophet at the time, gets wind of their plans and is devastated by the wickedness of these people. So he does the only thing he can - he prays for help from God. He bows himself down on the ground and prays the entire day.

Keep in mind that prophets had been prophesying for thousands of years about Christ's coming. Then this answer finally comes:

"Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfill all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets." (v13)

Be of good cheer. The time is at hand. Fulfill all.

That night there is no darkness and among other signs, a new star appears. Everything that had ever been prophesied about Christ's birth was fulfilled: "And it had come to pass, yea, all things, every whit, according to the words of the prophets." (v20)

I think a lot of us are hoping for the fulfillment of promised blessings in our own lives.

We can trust God to fulfill "every whit" of those blessings because he has done it without fail in the scriptures. Sometimes the timetable is lifetimes . . . but I know that God fulfills his promises.

You might be noticing a reoccurring theme in these posts. Whatever.

flat tires.

Last week I had an experience that reaffirmed a few things for me:

1. God knows me. God loves me. God never leaves me.

2. God often uses other people as his "angels," to help us in times of need. Sometimes unlikely people.

3. We are not exempt from trials, but they can be eased.

4. God listens when we pray.


Here's the experience, sorry, this may get long:

Last week Jakob and I started our long journey to Havasupai (located in the Grand Canyon). The plan was to drive to Kingman, AZ via Las Vegas and meet up with Austin's family.

I was a little worried about my car's ability to make another 1,000+ mile trip. We prayed before leaving and asked for God's protection.

In Las Vegas we stopped at Wal-Mart so Jakob could grab a few things and then we were going to get food and continue on our journey. Coming out of the Wal-Mart parking lot the steering wheel started pulling noticeably left. It got worse and then a terrible noise followed. We confirmed it was a flat tire and pulled into the nearest apartment complex.

This is where Bill comes in. A stout guy with long hair and a beard. Maybe a Harley-Davidson shirt? Not exactly white flowing robes. He just "happened to walk out of his apartment" and see us. He helped us remove the flat tire and put the temporary tire on. Then he told us that down the street there were some Mexican tire places where I could get a replacement starting at $25.

We found the tire place and I chose a used tire (might have been a mistake, but God still helped me out despite a poor decision). If we had gotten a flat tire just 10 minutes earlier we would have been going about 80 mph on I-15. A much more dangerous, and remote situation.

You can call it coincidence. However, I know that God helped us through an inevitable trial by making the timing so convenient. An answer to our prayers.

It gets better (or worse).

We got to Kingman in one piece and met up with Austin's family. We got settled into our hotel room and were planning on getting up at 3 am to head to the trail that leads into the Havasupai reservation.

I went out at about 11 that night to find the replacement tire was flat. I was a little surprised. I drove just down the street to a gas station and put air in the tire (there were a lot of hotels in the Kingman, "lucky" for us we were in one close to a gas station). There was definitely a hole in the tire. I could hear air coming out of it.

Had I found that out at 3 in the morning we would have not been able to do much about it.

So we slept in till 7 and got a new tire at Big O Tires, which "conveniently" was down the street from our hotel about a mile.

The rest of the journey went smoothly.

I don't believe there are many coincidences. This experience was evidence enough to show me that God loves me and never leaves me.