Eye of Faith

We had a Sunday School lesson the other day about the miracles Jesus performed during his mortal ministry. The teacher had written on the board, "Why Jesus performed miracles." As we discussed some of these events in the New Testament, the class came up with various reasons such as showing individual love and compassion, teaching gospel principles, giving witness of His divine role, etc. However, the question elicited a much different response from me. Rather than thinking of why He did perform miracles in certain circumstances, I was pondering about why He sometimes doesn't intervene with a miracle. All I could think about was times when a wanted miracle didn’t occur – when people exercised faith and God could have intervened to heal someone, save a life, or soften a heart, but didn’t. I was thinking of the few times in my life when I put all the faith I could in the promise, "ask and ye shall receive," but I didn't receive. I know this may sound like unf...

Grace, much like other common and seemingly simple scriptural words such as faith and hope, carries much more meaning that any simple definition can convey. I’ve often struggled to understand exactly what the concept of grace really means. Some of the difficulties my wife and I went through during my recent deployment to Afghanistan gave me an increased understanding on the topic. I think my idea of grace has, for a long time, been shaped by the words in 2 Nephi 25:23, “…for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do,” as well as a popular book from LDS author Stephen Robinson called Believing Christ . His book shared what he called the Parable of the Bicycle where a young boy does all he can to save money to buy a bicycle, but comes up drastically short of the needed sum. His father, recognizing the boy’s intent, effort, and limitations, makes up the difference. This story and the scripture in Nephi build the concept that grace is what we are given as a reward...