Rest of the story

I thought I would expound on the post from yesterday. The sister who spoke on trusting in the Lord related her difficulties in getting pregnant. She and her husband have spent years trying to have a family and she had even received a blessing promising her that she would have children. Even though my topic was tithing, I felt impressed to talk about faith in the Lord and His promised blessings; essentially, obeying the law of tithing helps us qualify for those blessings. I did not end my talk with a story about the miracle that happened to someone for paying tithing, but with the story of Rachel from the Old Testament which Elder Condie related in General Conference a few years ago and that I have referenced before in this blog:

With ever-increasing envy and mounting desperation, one day Rachel explosively demanded of Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die” (Genesis 30:1). Leah subsequently bore two more sons and a daughter.

In this age of one-hour dry cleaning and one-minute fast-food franchises, it may at times seem to us as though a loving Heavenly Father has misplaced our precious promises or He has put them on hold or filed them under the wrong name. Such were the feelings of Rachel.

But with the passage of time, we encounter four of the most beautiful words in holy writ: “And God remembered Rachel” (Genesis 30:22). And she was blessed with the birth of Joseph and later the birth of Benjamin. There are millions on earth today who are descendants of Joseph who have embraced the Abrahamic promise that through their efforts “shall all the families of the earth be blessed, even with the blessings of the Gospel, which are the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal” (Abraham 2:11).

When heaven’s promises sometimes seem afar off, I pray that each of us will embrace these exceeding great and precious promises and never let go. And just as God remembered Rachel, God will remember you.

I felt the Lord's hand in helping me prepare this talk. On the surface, this story has nothing to do with tithing, but it does have everything to do with the Lord fulfilling His promises to those who are faithful. I could not have known the speaker before me would speak about her struggles with getting pregnant or the promises she had received in priesthood blessings. It was a tender mercy in my life to realize I had been instrument in the hands of the Lord that day.