Today's Favorite Verse: Numbers 29:39-40

Today's Favorite Verse: Numbers 29:39-40
"These things ye shall do unto the Lord in your set feasts, beside your vows, and your freewill offerings, for your burnt offerings, and for your meat offerings, and for your drink offerings, and for your peace offerings.
And Moses told the children of Israel according to all the Lord commanded Moses."

As I read this long list of offerings, with exact descriptions of how many of this, and how many of that, my brain went numb. To the point I almost felt like I was in a trance. How many days are you doing all this? Really eight days!  No where does it really tell me why your doing this? Did anyone ever ask the question "Why?" Then I saw the why in the very last verse. The children of Israel didn't want to speak personally to the Lord. They had wanted Moses to interact with God on their behalf. Maybe this was continually repeated so they would eventually come to God themselves and ask "Why?" Not a murmuring or challenge why, but a sincere why, because I want to understand.

It made me think of Nephi and his brothers. After their father Lehi's vision of the tree of life only Nephi inquired of the Lord as to its meaning. Then he comes back from this amazing experience, with the vision opened up to him, and he sees his brothers. They are disputing with each other the meaning of their father's vision. (1 Nephi 15)

This is what Nephi acknowledges.

"For he truly spake many great things unto them, which were hard to be understood, save a man should inquire of the Lord; and they being hard in their hearts, therefore they did not look unto the Lord as they ought."

So Nephi simply asks them.

"And I said unto them: Have ye inquired of the Lord?
And they said unto me: We have not; for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us."

Then Nephi teaches them.

"Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said? - If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you."

So what this makes me think is that the Lord gives us hard things to understand sometimes, simply so I will turn to him and ask. The harder my heart the less likely I am to ask. Asking is exactly what I need in order to understand the mysteries of God. I don't think I've ever read about God saying don't knock or don't ask me, leave me alone. I think its only people that do that. I wonder what I've missed, because I didn't ask?


Day 721