June 8, 2020 - 1 Nephi 2

"Blessed are thou because of the things thou hast done," the Lord tells Lehi.  With respect to my previous post, those thing which most if not all others would have considered 'pearls before swine'.  I have read much and thought much about the idea of being and it's partnership with the doing.  I love an old talk by Elder Oaks in which he talks about the importance of the doing, but not because we stack up the deeds themselves, but because in the doing, we are 'becoming' something.

So what was Lehi becoming, because of all his 'doing'?  Well, Lehi was becoming - according to the Lord - "blessed".  So what does that mean, to be called "blessed"?  I guess there is the simple and intuitive response - that God will "bless him".  But the fact is that such is now how we find itr phrased in 1 Ne. 2:1.  God didn't say that he WOULD send Lehi blessings for what he had done, he said that Lehi is already "blessed" for what he had done.  In other words, it's not an activity, perhaps it is actually a state of being?  What does it mean to "be blessed"? 

Maybe the answer is in the subsequent versus.  Perhaps being blessed means being in a state of faith, in alignment with the Lord.  After receiving the praise of the Lord for his preaching, and being told that he was in a blessed state, he then is told to head out to the god-forsaken wilderness.  And in his "blessed" state, he didn't hesitate, he packed and went.  I was just thinking about how verse 4 compares to the rich young man who had desires to do good, but he was clearly not in a "blessed" state.  He hadn't done enough to become blessed, so his alignment was not in sync with God, and he thought to his physical possessions, rather than who he would be if he were willing to pay the price in order to become the person he wanted to be.

Step by step, young man, you can't be where you want to be if you don't take the next step - it's the only one available to you; but this was the step, and the young man wanted what he saw way up ahead but would not take that one simple next step, which would have led him to the next one.