Come, Follow Me August 19-25: Alma 53-63
In 2024, the Maxwell Institute will offer a weekly series of short essays on the Book of Mormon, in support of the Church-wide Come, Follow Me study curriculum. Each week, the Maxwell Institute blog will feature a post by a member of the Institute faculty exploring an aspect of the week’s reading block. We hope these explorations will enrich your study and teaching of the Book of Mormon throughout the coming year.
Happy for Someone Else's Miracle
By J.B. Haws
The stories associated with Helaman’s 2000 stripling warriors always stand out at the end of the book of Alma, even in a block of eleven chapters (Alma 53-63) filled with all kinds of action-packed episodes and characters. And rightly so, given how remarkable and memorable—and miraculous—the experiences of Helaman’s band truly were. There is a lot of depth to be plumbed here, including an opportunity to pause and consider the question of how to be happy for someone else’s miracle.
Here's what is meant by that. Alma 57:25-27 has Helaman’s retelling of that sobering moment when he rushed to take stock of his forces in the aftermath of a terrible battle around the city of Cumeni. Helaman didn’t hide his anxiety. As soon as the fighting ended, he “immediately”—think of the import of that word— “immediately gave orders that [his] men who had been wounded should be taken from among the dead, and caused that their wounds should be dressed” (Alma 54:24). We readers can share in what must have been Helaman’s breathless anticipation of the news that he surely dreaded: how many of these brave youth—these “little sons” of his—were killed? (Alma 56:39) The answer was “astonishing”—and that’s the very word that shows up, in some form, twice in these verses—“astonishing” to everyone: none had been killed. Can’t we just picture that scene? The look of relief and elation on Helaman’s face? I’m sure he must have asked for confirmation in this too-good-to-be-true moment. “None?!” he might have said again, just to be sure he heard correctly. “None!” someone must have confirmed—and can’t we just imagine the hint of laughter bubbling up in their voices? Did Helaman grab the messenger in a spontaneous embrace? Did tears flood everyone’s eyes? How could they hold back from praising God for this completely unexpected miracle?
What’s interesting, though, is that Helaman made the point, as he narrated this, that one thousand other Nephite soldiers died in that very same battle (see Alma 57:26). The inclusion of this detail matters on a couple of levels. For one, these casualties made the stripling warriors’ survival that much more unexpected and marvelous, in every sense of that word. This was a costly battle. These young two thousand and sixty fighters should not have survived; the odds were completely against them. That reality highlighted the sheer miracle of their survival.
But this detail about the casualty rate of the battle can also be a sobering reminder that one thousand other soldiers from their same army perished that day, one thousand soldiers who surely had friends and family—mothers and wives and children, and maybe even fathers or brothers or sons fighting right alongside them—praying for them, too, and yet those one thousand did not survive the fight.
This story can prompt us to ask a few questions of ourselves: How do we react when we hear someone share a miracle that we’ve hoped for but haven’t received? Can we feel joy for them? And what’s the point, anyway, of a miracle story that might cause pain for someone else who didn’t get what they prayed for?
We’re in a testimony meeting or a Sunday School class, or we’re scrolling through social media, and we hear from or read about someone expressing gratitude for the very type of miracle that we have been praying for, for ourselves or for someone we love. Cancer in remission. Pregnancy after years of infertility. Finding a job when all prospects seemed closed. Getting into the ideal university program. A loved one coming back from the depths of addiction. And on and on. And we can’t help but ask, why not me?
There are, of course, no easy answers to that question. And this account in Alma 57 doesn’t suggest that there are easy answers, either. What is striking about this account is that, at the very least, it can remind us that it is possible to join in the joy of someone else’s miracle even when we’re feeling a lack or a loss in our own life and situation. This account can remind us that seeing miracles for others can strengthen our faith that miracles have not ceased, that God is a God of miracles, that he has “all power, and can do whatsoever [he] wilt for the benefit of man” (Ether 3: 4). Seeing miracles in others’ lives can reassure us that God can fulfill his promises, that he is fully able to promise that “all things shall work together for [our] good,” even when we can’t see that end from the beginning (Doctrine and Covenants 90:24; compare Romans 8:28).
That reassurance may be good enough for a starting place, even if much of the “how do we get to the point of feeling that?” is left to us to discover and work through.
One of the temptations, I think, in our age is to hear others’ accounts of personal miracles with a skeptical ear. Naturally, it can be hard for those of us who weren’t involved personally in a miracle to feel the full depth of what the recipient of that miracle felt—the wonder and gratitude and spiritual impressions and confirmations. We might be tempted to dismiss something as a mere coincidence when the narrator knows, deeply, that this was no coincidence. Gratefully, the soldiers in Alma 57:25-27 didn’t give in to that temptation. “How could we have questioned their miraculous deliverance?”, they would probably ask. Perhaps that’s one other lesson these verses can help us keep in mind when we hear about others’ miracles.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks offered a profound meditation on this whole topic in the April 2010 General Conference in a talk called “Healing the Sick.” One of his concluding paragraphs is worth repeating here:
“As children of God, knowing of His great love and His ultimate knowledge of what is best for our eternal welfare, we trust in Him. The first principle of the gospel is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and faith means trust. I felt that trust in a talk my cousin gave at the funeral of a teenage girl who had died of a serious illness. He spoke these words, which first astonished me and then edified me: ‘I know it was the will of the Lord that she die. She had good medical care. She was given priesthood blessings. Her name was on the prayer roll in the temple. She was the subject of hundreds of prayers for her restoration to health. And I know that there is enough faith in this family that she would have been healed unless it was the will of the Lord to take her home at this time.’ I felt that same trust in the words of the father of another choice girl whose life was taken by cancer in her teen years. He declared, ‘Our family’s faith is in Jesus Christ and is not dependent on outcomes.’ Those teachings ring true to me. We do all that we can for the healing of a loved one, and then we trust in the Lord for the outcome.”
Hearing—really hearing—the miracle stories in others’ lives can affirm to us, again and again, that God is completely and fully worthy of that kind of trust. He does know “the end from the beginning” (Abraham 2:8), and with that confidence in our minds and hearts, we can let ourselves feel joy when we see evidence that he is still doing astonishing things all around us, all the time.
IMAGES
Adair Payne, "According to Thy Faith", n/a.
Josh Cotton, [Stripling Warrior], 2022. The Book of Mormon Art Catalog, [bookofmormonartcatalog.org/catalog/stripling-warrior-5/].
David Koch, Feed My Sheep, 2012.
