Highly Favored Of The Lord

One of the first things that Nephi says is that he has "seen many afflictions in the course of [his] day, nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord" (1Nephi 1:1). The adverb nevertheless implies that seeing afflictions and being highly favored of the Lord are unrelated. He was afflicted and then for entirely different reasons he was favored. But I'm not so sure. We tend to think that if someone is going through a really tough time it is evidence either of God's displeasure and they're being punished, or that God is indifferent or unloving or He flat out doesn't even exist. But if we accept that God does exist and He does love us and we still get afflicted, then we have to accept that God does not show His love by preventing every bad thing from happening to us. Rather, He shows His love and His favor by helping us get through and overcome our afflictions. Going through a hard time does not mean God is apathetic or antagonistic towards us, but surviving and coming out the other side even stronger is evidence that God loves us and is helping us. Nephi had a lot of evidence of God's love and favor because he went through so many afflictions and he survived and came out of them a better, wiser, more humble person. When faced with a tough situation, we often ask Why me? The answer is that we are highly favored of the Lord. God can't or He won't stop the hard times from coming but He will give us the strength and the stamina and the hope to get through it. We look for God at the start of our affliction in the hope that He'll be a shield to stop it from happening to us, but we ought to be looking for God in the middle and the end, as He helps us through it. If we survive a battle then we have proof that God favors us because the battle didn't destroy us. We really ought to be saying that we have seen many afflictions in the course of our days and because of this we have been highly favored of the Lord.