Crossing the Water

I was thinking about how the Lord has given help to those who needed to cross a body of water in three different ways. For Nephi, or the brother of Jared, the Lord gave them knowledge on how to build a boat unlike any other so that they would be able to cross the water. For Moses or Joshua, the Lord held back the water so they and their people could cross on dry land. For Peter, the Lord blessed him with the ability to walk directly on the surface of the water. These three different kinds of miracles all helped people get across water, just in very different ways. But each way required faith and the power of God. It took faith for Nephi and the brother of Jared to leave the design principles and conventional wisdom of standard boat making and trust that the Lord's designs would not only work, but were actually the only designs that would work. But they also had to maintain their faith while crossing the ocean, a fact that Nephi and his family learned to their peril when Laman and Lemuel began behaving rudely and they were all almost destroyed. It took faith for the children of Israel following Moses through the bottom of the Red Sea and Joshua through the bottom of the River Jordan, faith that waters being held miraculously back wouldn't come crashing down on them. And it took faith for Peter to walk on water, even after he wavered and began to sink, because once the Savior picked him back up, Peter still had faith to continue walking on water back to the boat. The reason I point all of this out is that sometimes the help God gives us is the knowledge and inspiration to go forth with faith and do the hard thing in our own way. It may not be as flashy as the other kinds of miracles but personal revelation is a miracle and we would be very lost without it. Sometimes, the help God gives us is to hold back the floods that threaten to crush us so that we can make it through a tough time without drowning. I imagine that when the children of Israel walked through the Red Sea it was still no easy thing. They probably slipped on seaweed, squelched through mud and had to climb up and down rocky reefs and corals. Even if God is holding back the worst of it, navigating life still requires faith and patience and perseverance. And then finally, sometimes the help God gives us to miraculously walk right over the top of our problems, although that path is slippery in the extreme and requires constant faith and constant focus on our Savior who is granting us the continued ability to walk this straight and narrow path. We should not assume that in any of these examples that one miracle is necessarily an indication of a higher degree of faith or favoritism from the Lord. Each faced a specific challenge and God provided a different solution for each that would allow them the most room to prove themselves without being completely overwhelmed. If we're facing a challenge that is too tough for us and we've been pleading with the Lord's help and seeming not to get it, then maybe we're praying for the wrong kind of help. Maybe we're asking God to part the sea before us when we should be asking instead how to build a boat, or to walk on top of the water. I know that God has the right kind of miracle for every occasion and if we have the faith to receive His help in the manner He has deemed most appropriate then we will be able to overcome any and all seas and rivers and oceans that block our path.