One day a couple years ago, I was helping my dad in the garden.
He asked me to unroll the hose.
I did.
He asked me to keep unrolling.
To unroll the entire thing.
I was a bit confused. Why do the whole thing? I had clearly unrolled enough.
Then, when I saw how long the hose was and how long it was going to take, I got a little frustrated. This seemed futile. A waste of time. I unrolled four times the needed amount.
Then, after it was all unrolled, I went to my dad.
He told me there had been a kink in the rolled up hose.
No water was coming out.
I needed to unroll everything to complete the task.
Suddenly, my seemingly futile task made sense.
I thought of this moment as I was studying obedience, and specifically polygamy, this week.
Sometimes, we learn about things or are asked to do things by the Lord that at the time don’t make sense.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that section 132, which discusses the commandment of polygamy, also discusses Abraham being commanded to offer his son Isaac—another sacrifice that was challenging and heart-wrenching and didn’t make sense.
We will all have our own Abrahamic sacrifices in this life.
Things we won’t know because of our limited perspective,
Until the end.
The hose sometimes needs to be fully undone for us to fully understand.
The key in those moments is leaning into our relationship with God, trusting in what we know about the Him, His character, and His heart.
In those moments, we are not blindly following. We are actively keeping our eyes on the Savior.
Truly, “Obedience is a choice between our own limited knowledge and power and God’s unlimited wisdom and omnipotence.” (L. Tom Perry)
In the end, everything will be unrolled.
It will all make sense.
And we will be so glad we trusted God’s heart even in the moments we didn’t understand His word.
come follow me daily 