Numbers 3-4

(April 9, 2014)
Sometimes I think that it would be so much easier to live my life if I knew...really knew...everything in the Gospel.  If only I could live through knowledge rather than through faith, things would be so much better.  On one hand, this is an absurd thought.  After all, I have seen miracles in my life that can only be explained as proof of the existence of the Divine – not serendipitous miracles but actual Divine intervention contrary to the laws of physics.  They are few, and they are distant in time right now, but they are still there.  And, add to that the serendipitous miracles that still happen regularly (moreso since I have turned my life back around), and you would think that I would have no trouble feeling deep in my bones that the Gospel is true.

But we know that conversion does not come through miracles – even when the miracle is one that you are blessed to participate in.  And so I still, from time to time, struggle with my faith.  In these moments, I ask myself why the Lord doesn’t open the veil for me.  After all, I want to know, and I want to give my will over to Him.  But that isn’t the way that the world works.  We can see that in this chapter.  The children of Israel had seen miracles through the course of their Exodus.  They were living off of manna, for Pete’s sake.  And yet, when the company traveled the Ark was covered to hide it from the sight of the people.  They had come to know through the miracles (reluctantly – if you recall, many rejected or disliked their miraculous rescue from bondage), but they had to retain that knowledge through faith.  They were not allowed to walk in and touch the Ark whenever they wanted to so as to remind them of what had happened in the past.  Instead, they had to learn to live through faith day by day.