Peaks and Troughs

“For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss, as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass, which would point unto them a straight course to the promised land.” (Alma 37: 44). It is hard to imagine anything traveling in a straighter line than a beam of light. When we want to describe something as superlatively precise, we use the term “laser-guided.” The Lord has promised us that if we follow Him, He will direct us on a straight, laser-guided course to eternal bliss. When we are imagining this straight, laser-guided course, we might usually imagine that not only does it not turn to the right or the left, but it also proceeds in a perfectly level plane, neither rising above nor below that straight, flat line. After all, when we see the trail of laser, it seems to us to be traveling in a perfectly straight line. But the truth is that light travels in waves. Although every photon of a laser will hit the exact same spot with unmatched precision, the path that these photons takes is actually one that involves a lot of peaks and troughs as it follows a wave-like pattern even as it seems to us to be traveling in a perfectly straight line. Each particle of light will rise and fall and rise and fall 400 to 700 trillion times per second for light that is in the visible spectrum. It may sometimes feel when we are climbing up the peaks and descending down into the troughs that we are not exactly traveling in a straight line. Especially when we are struggling through some of the deeper troughs, we may feel that we have been misled or else the Lord no longer cares about us or we have somehow gone astray and left the straight course. But if we stick to the straight course, then we will soon learn to trust the Lord and accept that when we are rising and progressing and everything seems to be going right, then we are on the straight course, and when we are falling down into the trough and trudging through the valley of the shadow of death, then we are still on the straight course. Up and down, up and down, up and down, we are still following that laser guided path straight to eternal bliss.