3rd Nephi 9

I cannot deal with verses 1 to 12 at all. The Jesus I know and love doesn't reach out and destroy. My way of understanding such scriptures is to ascribe to the author his own interpretation of natural events that took place. I have to let go of these verses. . .

However, verses 13 through 22 are just beautiful. At last the Savior has come. Here is his own testimony of who He is and what He has accomplished

Verse 13 describes the wonderful process: come unto me, repent, be converted, I will heal you.

I love that Jesus talks of healing us. Isaiah was the first to promise us Jesus would be the healer:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Nephi promised the same in 2nd Nephi 25:13.

Behold they will crucify him; and after he is laid in the sepulcher for the 

space of three days, he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings . . .

We see in the four gospels a Jesus who devoted his whole life to healing. We are about to see Him bring that gift to these Nephites.

We long for that experience for ourselves. We know we are wounded. We seek healing. We pray for comfort, peace - sweet peace to help us through the difficult times. We trust this Jesus because we know what He did for the blind, the leper, the woman caught in adultery, the man who was lowered through the roof, for Mary of Magdala.

We have moments of healing now when we pray and fast and find that peace. 

But just think for a moment of the millions whose lives were defined by starvation, by war, by slavery, by the ravages of unbelievable abuse.  Life has been cruel to minorities everywhere. World war II had its holocaust, but so did Rwanda and Sudan and Cambodia and Russia and China with their pogroms and genocides.  And America is not innocent when it comes to these issues. The stories are endless of men's inhumanity. So many die in the midst of life's horrors.

I trust that this Jesus who brought healing in Galilee, whose capacity for suffering with us showed that His great love and compassion extends to all, is there to greet each wounded soul and heal them.

Come, ye disconsolate

Where e'er ye languish

Come to the mercy seat

Fervently kneel.

Here bring your wounded hearts

Here tell your anguish

Earth has no sorrow

That heaven cannot heal.

Thomas Moore 1779-1852

The larger question for me, is how do I join the Savior in bringing healing to others? That 

challenge looms over me daily. It is my duty to figure that out for myself for it is I who has covenanted to "come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;  Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places."

St. Francis of Assisi understood this call, too.  He penned the following: