These Are My Days

Reading:   Helaman 7-8

In every age there have been problems.  For that matter, in every generation there are things that cause contentions and issues for those that exist within it.  I have many times wondered what it would have been like to live in a different time.  To be a Viking (weird huh), a soldier in the Great War, a commander in the Civil War, yes maybe even a gladiator or bodyguard to a prophet or president.  I look at those times and feel like my stature and personality would better match the struggles then, that I could be of real help then, a better man then...I wonder why it is I was chosen for this time and wish the blindness of mortality could be lifted for a moment so that I could understand.

Reading through the scriptures it is fascinating to see the cycle of trouble in each generation and how the prophets, generals, and people of that time struggle to deal with whatever stresses them.  The verses that jumped out at me today address the issue of time and personal existence in a specific time...Nephi (the son of Helaman) has been preaching to the Nephites and is extremely distraught by their wickedness and his inability to arouse them to repentance...

HELAMAN 7:8-9

8 Yea, if my days could have been in those days, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my brethren. 

9    But behold, I am consigned that these are my days, and that my soul shall be filled with sorrow because of this the wickedness of my brethren. 

Here is a righteous, enlightened, pillar of faith, a man that stood in the midst of a flaming fire and took part in a great conversion of Lamanites and yet, he, like me, wishes he had been born in a time where he might affect more good and witness more righteousness, wow!  His wish is to be with Nephi upon their first years in the promised land when life seemed so much easier...hold up, wait a minute, really?  I've read the struggles that the original Nephi had and, listen, it was not as easy as you think.  I am sure that Nephi often wished he had been blessed to live in Jeruselum in the age of his father, Lehi, when all seemed so much easier, hmmm?

I know there is a reason I am here, at this time, as surely as the need for the original Nephi to be born a brother to Laman and Lemuel and son to the visionary Lehi.  Certain also was the need of the current Nephi (son of Helaman) to live and struggle in the age of his existence.  I am getting older and feel my body aging and though I want to stay the strong, willing to take a punch, and fight the fight guy that I am - I feel it slipping away and the opprinities of what I envisioned my purpose to be, waning.  I accept that this is my time for a reason just wish that reason would be a little more obvious to me.  Hang in there Nephi, I'm with you bro!

~Kipling