What does Isaiah have to do with your daily life? Filled with archaic references and symbols from another age, Isaiah may not seem relevant to you at first, but there are nuggets of gold in these chapters. Nephi loved Isaiah, and said that Isaiah had seen the Savior, as Nephi had, along with Jacob. These three special witnesses of Christ have much to teach us.
I don't think you need to get
everything in Isaiah; it's just important to get
something from him each time we go through the Book of Mormon. Northrop Frye, the great Christian literary critic, spoke of polysemous (layered) meanings in the scriptures: each time we go through we find something different, because we are different each time we go through. So, since Nephi and Jacob offer their own "midrash" on Isaiah's prophecies, I'm going to offer one as well. Here is the passage:
“And all the nations that fight against Zion, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision; yea, it shall be unto them, even as unto a hungry man which dreameth, and behold he eateth but he awaketh and his soul is empty; or like unto a thirsty man which dreameth, and behold he drinketh but he awaketh and behold he is faint, and his soul hath appetite; yea, even so shall the multitude of all the nations be that fight against Mount Zion.” (2 Ne 27:3)
I first encountered this verse as a missionary, when my Japanese companion read it to me during our study time and asked if we were really offering our investigators what they needed. We reexamined our lessons and decided to focus more on the Savior right from the start, which really increased our effectiveness. Many years later, in a totally different setting, this verse became meaningful again.
Isaiah Goes to Girls Camp
I have spent many of my years in the Church serving in the Young Women’s organization, and fifteen of those years putting on Girl’s Camp. (I personally feel that this should assure my exaltation.) Camp traditionally ends with a testimony meeting, where the girls have a chance to get up and express how they have been affected by their camp experience. These are, of course, tearful, emotional meetings. (With 200 pubescent girls involved and 40 – 50 exhausted leaders, there are bound to be lots of tears!) But over the years as I planned our camp activities I began to worry that what we were creating there was perhaps not as substantive as it should be. The girls would get all worked up, but within a few days all that good camp “mojo” seemed to drain away and life went back to its old patterns. Were we really changing lives? I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. Then one day I was struggling through the Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon and came upon the same verse that we had studied together during my mission.
At first glance this scripture wouldn’t seem to apply to a bunch of teenaged girls; they are not nations fighting against Zion! (Though random acts of violence may occasionally occur in cabins filled with teenage girls.) But the image of the hungry dreamer struck me, and made me think about how emotion can be a deceptive substitute for real change. We may get very worked up and feel all ready to reform our lives, but after the excitement of the meeting we are like the hungry man that dreamed about a yummy dinner but woke up just as empty as before. I realized that these girls were coming to camp, getting very emotionally wrought up, but that a real change of heart was not occurring in their lives. They were being emotionally stimulated rather than spiritually filled.
So what was the answer? Nephi says that the key to Isaiah is the spirit of prophecy, or the testimony of Jesus. So I began to think about what we were doing specifically to build the testimony of Jesus in the hearts of girls. The next year, we tried to emphasize gaining a knowledge of the Savior and his atonement in our lessons, in our devotionals, in our messages, and in our private discussions with girls. We trained our counselors to give a daily devotional on the Savior, and planned a final one for the last day of camp with each of our counselors giving a lesson on the parable of the ten virgins to her little group, and bearing a special testimony of Jesus and his atoning mercy.
Campers Converted to Christ
These wonderful counselors fasted and prayed and really poured their hearts into those lessons. On the final day each group found a quiet spot and the lessons were given. As they drew to a close our Stake President (who had come up for the occasion, dressed in his suit) walked around to each group and quietly invited them to come with him, because the “Bridegroom was come.” The girls, surprised by his sudden appearance in their midst, came reverently, singing hymns along the way, and gathered in the amphitheater where a large picture of the Savior was displayed. Our sweet Stake President then bore a powerful testimony of the Savior, and invited them to do the same.
The difference in that meeting was palpable. Certainly there was emotion, but the testimonies (which in former years had focused mostly on friends and family) were centered on the Lord and his redeeming love, which they had felt all week and which poured out on that gathering like a little Pentecost. I felt afterward that the testimonies that were borne that day were substantive; they were still there the next morning, and in subsequent weeks and months. That experience taught me that Jesus is the only bread of life and the living water. Anything else is just snack food, an illusive experience like a dream that leaves you hungry and thirsty later. I have Isaiah to thank for that lesson.
So gird up your linguistic loins and make your way through Isaiah, maybe with a goal to just find three or four things about which you can make a little midrash, lessons that will apply to you and your calling or your kids or your job. There is some good stuff in there, and it's all about Jesus. Let's be sure that the fruit we offer our youth and everyone in our circle of influence is the real thing, the Lord and his redeeming love. That's what Isaiah is saying.
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