One of the things I love in this chapter (1 Ne. 7) is to see how completely the blessing given to Joseph (favored son of Jacob that was sold into Egypt), that he would be "a fruitful bough....running over the wall....a branch broken off from the rest of Israel", was so literally fulfilled in Lehi's family (a descendant of Manasseh) being commanded to return for Ishmael's family (descendant of Ephriam) and that these two lines intermarry and grow together into a huge posterity on the American continent...an ocean away from all the rest of the Israelites.
In 7:15 we talked about how pleasant Nephi's life could have been if Laman and Lemuel had gone ahead and returned to Jerusalem!! Perhaps all of the opposition was necessary to mold him into the great prophet he became. Sooo.....how is the Lord molding each of us into the daughters he needs us to be?.......it does seem to take lots of opposition!
A very rare experience that Nephi was given was to see the Holy Ghost....1 nephi 11 is an amazing chapter. In verse 7 we see the Holy Ghost bears witness of Jesus Christ (that Nephi is about to see) and tells Nephi that after this, he is to bear record that it is the son of God. In 11:11, Nephi identifies that it was the Holy Ghost and then as you read on, the Holy Ghost leaves (he fulfuilled his purpose) and an angel then descends in verse 14 to show Nephi the rest of the whole vision. I find verse 32 to be one of the most touching.
I LOVE the Book of Mormon!!
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I'm a little behind- I just read chapter 7. My favorite verse in that chapter is verse 12. "...the Lord is able to do ALL things according to his will..." I think it's a little easier to have faith when we're asking for something we've seen or experienced before. But the hard faith is when we're asking for something that we have never witnessed. Like when we adopted Kaylie we had never experienced that before and it was more difficult to have faith because we had been through so much disappointment and yet we were blessed with more miracles through that that experience that we had seen in our whole lives! So I loved your comment that Nephi needed the trials from Laman and Lemuel to shape his life...Trials truly are blessings!
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