Another Dream About a Tree

1 Nephi 11-15

1 Nephi 11:26 And the angel said unto me again: Look and behold the condescension of God!

Remember how Lehi had that dream? It was dark but then there was a tree and the tree had fruit on it and the fruit shone like light bulbs? And

do you remember how Lehi was scared at first but then he learned everything was going to be okay and he didn’t need to be scared because of Jesus?

Well, this probably wasn’t the first time you were told about Jesus because Jesus came thousands of years ago, so we all know about him. But Lehi and his family, they lived before Jesus did.

So when Lehi explained his dream, Nephi didn’t understand. Because Nephi didn’t know that much about Jesus. But he wanted to know more. Nephi wanted to see everything his father had seen. So you know what he did? He prayed and asked if he could have the same dream. And God said okay.

Wouldn’t that be fun if you could dream the same dream as your parents? Well, these dreams weren’t just any dream. Most dreams are not real. They’re just made-up stuff. But these dreams were real and Jesus was not made up. He really was going to come. And Lehi and Nephi got to see him in a special dream hundreds of years before he even came.

Nephi saw his father’s dream but then he saw a little more. And this is what he saw. He saw Jesus being born. He saw him grow and be baptized. He saw Jesus help blind people see. He saw Jesus make sick people healthy. He saw him be kind and loving. And that made Nephi happy because when you see other people doing good and kind things, it makes you happy. And Jesus just went about doing good things.

Do you remember how Lehi’s dream started scary and became happy? Nephi’s dream started happy but became a little scary. And this is where Nephi’s dream got a little scary. Even though Jesus was going around being good and helping people, some people didn’t like him. In fact, they disliked him and wanted to hurt him.

How could you not like Jesus? Well, sometimes people are jealous. Have you ever felt jealous of someone? Maybe they have something you want. Maybe they’re good at something you wish you were good at? If you’ve ever felt this way it’s because you have pride. But don’t worry, we all have pride. It’s no good pretending you don’t. Jesus knows you have pride, and he wants to help you be better. He wants us to love everyone. He wants us to love weird people, poor people, and even rich people.

But sometimes it’s hard to love people because we have pride. And that’s why it was hard for people to love Jesus. Instead of loving him, they were jealous of him. They were jealous of his power to heal people. They were jealous of his ability to walk on water. But more than anything, they didn’t want his help to repent. They didn’t want to be told what to do. They didn’t want to feel bad about what they were doing. They just wanted to be happy being who they were.

And so you see, they didn’t really get Jesus. He didn’t want them to feel bad, He wanted them to feel love. But instead of listening to Jesus and repenting, they decided to get rid of Jesus. And they did a really bad thing. They tried to kill Jesus.

But Jesus did the most incredible thing ever done. He let them. He let them take him. He let them beat him. And he even let them kill him. And he did this because he loved them. And he knew that by dying for them he would be able to save them. Because he loved everyone, even the people who were hurting him. 

And after Jesus had died, he came back from the dead to help even more people. He set up a church so that even though he could no longer live on the earth, he could still help people by giving them something called “the gospel.” It was a way for people to learn about him and get to know him so that he could still be with them. And so he wrote his gospel down in a book called the Bible.

But remember how people rejected Jesus because of their pride when he was living with them? Well they rejected his gospel, too, and they rejected the Bible. They didn’t want to be with Jesus because he asked them to love and be kind all the time and they weren’t ready for that. But Jesus was going to be patient. He was going to wait for them to be ready. And when they were ready, he would come back to them and help them be good.

And so he created this very book — well not this very book. This is just a children’s book version of The Book of Mormon. And The Book of Mormon is a book that was written so that people like you and I could learn about Jesus. The Book of Mormon and the Bible both are all about how Jesus is keeping his gospel on the earth.

And that was Nephi’s dream. It was a dream about Jesus and all of us and whether or not we will let Jesus help us be good.

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.

Artwork by Maddie Baker.