A Sad Story

2 Nephi 4-10

2 Nephi 8:11 Therefore, the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy and holiness shall be upon their heads; and they shall obtain gladness and joy; sorrow and mourning shall flee away. 

You may have noticed that there aren’t that many happy stories so far. Don’t worry, there will be. But you should also know now that this book doesn’t exactly end happily. There’s going to be a lot of sad stories that seem to lead to a really sad ending. But that’s the thing about Jesus. He can take our very saddest stories, the most terrible moments in our lives, the worst happenings in the history of the world, and redeem them.

Redeem, a definition:

To take a sad story and give it a happy ending. 

And that’s important to know because this story is terribly sad. Because after Lehi died, his family fell apart. And it fell apart even though Nephi kept praying and asking God what to do. And God kept talking to Nephi. And even though God kept leading and guiding and loving Nephi and his brothers and sisters and mother and his whole family, they all kept messing up. And this made Nephi sad. Because out of everyone, he should not be the one messing up.

He had seen angels. God had him taught how to build a bow and boat and books and buildings. Nephi had been saved over and over again. His prayers had been answered. He had traveled through a desert, over an ocean, up mountains, and down rivers. And greater than all of that, Nephi had talked with God. And still, after his father died, he was sad. He cried all night because he missed his dad. And all of Nephi’s sadness and lack of sleep made him tired. And when he became tired he also became grumpy. And now that he was grumpy, he couldn’t feel any hope. Instead, he felt despair. And despair made him angry and he lost his temper, and he yelled at his brothers and told them where to get off.

And how is it possible for Nephi to be sad or grumpy or hopeless or angry or mean? “Nephi,” Nephi said to himself, “you are better than this. And your brothers are better than this. And your family is better than this.” And so Nephi told his brothers and his family, “Dad is not here anymore, but he would want us to be better. And so from now on we aren’t going to doubt or be angry or sin or feel sad or hopeless. We are just going to keep right on trusting and believing our way into happiness.” But this did not work.

Laman and Lemuel were tired of Nephi telling them what to do. They wanted to be sad. And they wanted to doubt a little so that they could be angry. Because being angry helped them grieve. Any other way felt incorrect, unkind, impossible. And so they told Nephi, “You are not the boss of us. You do things your way and we will do things our way. But don’t think your way is any better than ours.”

And so the brothers all tried to go about doing things their own way. But this also did not work. Laman and Lemuel could not stand the way Nephi woke early and whistled and laughed and hoped and prayed and thanked God for everything all of the time. And Nephi could not stand the way Laman and Lemuel slept in and moaned and cried and did not pray because they did not want to talk to God. They were still too angry. And because they were angry, they could not feel God’s love or Nephi’s love.

And they began to doubt that God or Nephi had even loved their father. They alone had loved him. And their father loved them even when they messed up or sinned or got angry. Because being angry helped them grieve. Any other way felt incorrect, unkind, impossible. And so they told Nephi, “You are not the boss of us. You do things your way and we will do things our way. But don’t think your way is any better than ours.”  

And so the brothers all tried to go about doing things their own way. But this also did not work. Laman and Lemuel could not stand the way Nephi woke early and whistled and laughed and hoped and prayed and thanked God for everything all of the time. And Nephi could not stand the way Laman and Lemuel slept in and moaned and cried and did not pray. Because they did not want to talk to God. They were still too angry. And because they were angry, they could not feel God’s love or Nephi’s love. 

And they began to doubt that God or Nephi had even loved their father. They alone had loved him. And their father had loved them even when they had messed up or sinned or gotten angry. Their father’s love had held the family together, and now that he was dead, they didn’t know how to go on together. And their grief grew deeper and sharper and purer until it became hatred. And when they saw Nephi, their hatred would only get worse and worse until it was unbearable. Maybe, they thought, if we didn’t have to see Nephi, we would stop feeling so miserable. And so they decided they were going to do a bad thing. They were going to kill Nephi.

But God protected Nephi. He told Nephi to take his family and run far away to a new home in a new part of The Promised Land. So Nephi and Sam and Zoram and their sisters and wives and children, and Nephi’s new little brothers Jacob and Joseph packed up all their things and slipped away into the night.

The family of Lehi and Sariah was broken in half. And the next time they saw each other, they fought with bows and arrows and armies. And this made Nephi sad all over again. How could they not have been better than this? God had delivered them over and over again and brought them to a promised land. He wanted the family to be safe and healthy and happy. But already, they had ruined it. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen! And all of the brothers were sad.

And one day, Jacob’s heart was aching and so he decided to read his scriptures. He was reading some scriptures by the prophet Isaiah who wrote about a time in his life a hundred years earlier when he was also feeling sad and God comforted him. Jacob read:

Do you think that I have forgotten you? Or that I sold you away to someone else to take care of you? Or maybe do you think that your sin is more powerful than my goodness? Perhaps you think that I do not have the strength to redeem you. Have you forgotten me? I dressed the sky in a blanket of stars so you would have light. I raised continents up from the ocean so you would have land, and the waters and the rocks speak my name. I put fish in the rivers, and plants on the earth so you would have beauty and strength and life. And you are precious to me.

Wherever you are, I will love you. When you are in the wilderness, I will comfort you. When you are in the garden, I will rejoice with you. When the continents fall back into the ocean, and the waters dry up, and the earth becomes so old it is like a rag with so many holes, I will come to you and I will call you by name, and you will see that I have never forgotten you for a moment.

Jacob read what Isaiah wrote, and he understood. Even though everything was all wrong, God would make everything alright. Maybe not now. Maybe not while they were alive. But someday, God would send a redeemer. The Redeemer, Jesus. And Jesus would find a way to redeem even this story, to write it all up in a book, and give it such an ending that we cannot help but say, “Ah, that is the perfect ending to such a beautiful story.”

And Jacob told Nephi about Jesus and they both felt a little better. But what is remarkable, what you may have noticed, is that redeeming is what Jesus was doing at that very second. He was changing their hearts about themselves and about Laman and Lemuel. He was setting up the ending so that when it happened, they would be able to see it for what it was: something astonishing, unexpected, irresistible, divine.

But we are not at the ending yet. Not even close. There’s a long, long way to go.

Joshua is an award-winning writer and director. His recent book, Ali the Iraqi, was published by BCC press. Sarah is a literature and theology doctoral student studying the Book of Job in the twentieth century.

Artwork by Maddie Baker.