Pasture

When I was a little boy, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house. They lived in a rural area and trained thoroughbred racehorses. One of my favorite things to do was to spend time wandering through the expansive pastures with my cousins. We could spend hours just wandering around and enjoying the fresh air. For the most part, the horses spent time in the pastures where they had freedom to roam and all the fresh grass that they could eat. Now, my grandparents live in Arizona durng the winter months. While there they still race horses, butsince the track is in the city the horses are confined to small stalls. As I visit them there I often think that the horses must get restless in those stalls. When they bring the horses home, there is a long ride in a horse trailer which must be worse than sitting in the stalls, but at the end of that journey is a summer of freedom. I imagine that those horses are overjoyed to return to the pastures where they can run and play without the limitations of walls and gates.

This comparison helped me to better understand a passage from 1 Nephi 22:24-25:

"And the time speedily cometh that the righteous must be led up as calves of the stall, and the Holy One of Israel must reign in dominion, and might, and power, and great glory. And he gathereth his children from the four quarters of the earth; and he numbereth his sheep, and they know him; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd; and he shall feed his sheep, and in him they shall find pasture."

Isn't that just a wonderful metaphor that Nephi uses to teach us about how the Savior can help us. Because of sin, we are like the horses who spend all winter in a stall. We are bound and cannot have some of the greatest joys of life. Yet, the Savior is there to lead us out. The journey of repentance may be long and arduous, but the reward at the end is so grand. Like those horses, the Savior will lead us to pasture.