Mountains to Climb

I really enjoyed our Relief Society lesson today taught by Molly Richards.  Her lesson was based on Elder Eyering's Talk "Mountains to Climb."

Elder Eyering heard President Spencer W. Kimball, in a session of conference, ask that God would give him mountains to climb. He said: “There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, ‘Give me this mountain,’ give me these challenges.”

Elder Eyring thought "My heart was stirred, knowing, as I did, some of the challenges and adversity he had already faced. I felt a desire to be more like him, a valiant servant of God. So one night I prayed for a test to prove my courage. I can remember it vividly. In the evening I knelt in my bedroom with a faith that seemed almost to fill my heart to bursting."

Within a day or two my prayer his prayer was answered with the hardest trial of my life.

WOW!  What faith!  I often feel myself praying that everything will just go right, and I know I haven't faced many "mountains."  Deep down I want those experiences and I want to be able to grow but I find it a little scary to ask for "mountains" because I know the Lord will answer.  I am at a crossroad wanting the comfort and stability of verything going right but also knowing as Elder Eyering " that great blessing could come from adversity to more than compensate for any cost."

In the lesson we also read the Old Testament account that this phrase "Mountains to Climb" comes from.  When Moses and the children of Israel come to the land of Canaan Moses sends 12 men to scout the land, and among them are Joshua and Caleb.  The land has been chosen by the Lord so all reports should come back positively but Caleb and joshua's good reports are drowned out by the other negative reports.  So the children of Israel wander for 40 more years.

In Joshua Chapter 14 Caleb is  once again ready to inhabit the land of Canaan.  At 85 years old his testimony was as strong and unshakable as 40 years earlier when he wanted to enter Canaan relying on the providence of the Lord:

11 As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in.

 12 Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and ^afenced: if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said.

I don't know if I am quite ready to pray for "mountains" but I pray that I can increase my faith and be ready for the trails that come my way.

"I cannot promise an end to your adversity in this life. I cannot assure you that your trials will seem to you to be only for a moment. One of the characteristics of trials in life is that they seem to make clocks slow down and then appear almost to stop.There are reasons for that. Knowing those reasons may not give much comfort, but it can give you a feeling of patience. Those reasons come from this one fact: in Their perfect love for you, Heavenly Father and the Savior want you fitted to be with Them to live in families forever. Only those washed perfectly clean through the Atonement of Jesus Christ can be there."