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We believe in an active God, a heavenly parent who takes an active interest in our lives, and who acts for the good of His children. While miracles do happen, often God\u2019s help is invisible, arriving through inspiration and less-obvious interventions. Even God\u2019s intervention in the story of Daniel in the Lion\u2019s Den is not necessarily obvious\u2014it wouldn\u2019t have been obvious why the lions didn\u2019t consume Daniel. We are told that God stopped their mouths, but how could they know that it was God? A doubter could easily attribute Daniel\u2019s survival to something else.<\/p>\n
The subtle and indirect way that God acts leaves room for doubt\u2014and for faith. In a world that believes we should focus decisions only on evidence, it is hard to understand how to rely on faith, and when we are relying on what we want to believe, instead of things that are true. On one hand we have those who only believe what they can see and understand, and on the other we have those who claim faith in false ideas, counter to evidence and based on what they want to believe. Faith exists somewhere in the middle. And there we find that God really delivers.<\/p>\n
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We are here on this earth to learn to walk in faith, to struggle with the range of possible decisions we can make, using evidence and careful consideration, yes, but also using faith when the way isn\u2019t clear or when we receive revelation.<\/p>\n
This short poem provides encouragement in such times, urging us, the readers, to maintain faith despite the challenges of life. And the poet, as a survivor of the Willie and Martin handcart companies and of abandonment by her first husband, knew what she was talking about when she spoke of trials.<\/p>\n
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by Emily Hill Woodmansee<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
18??<\/p>\n
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We also see God\u2019s intervention in the restoration of the Gospel and the growth of His church. The restoration is a major theme of LDS poetry and often appears in our hymns. These works always attribute the events of the restoration to God\u2019s actions. This poem is similar to many poems about the restoration, and was written to be a hymn urging conversion and participation in the Kingdom of God, crediting Him for the restoration.<\/p>\n
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by W. Fowler<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
1855<\/p>\n
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Perhaps the most frequent and personal intervention of God in our lives is revelation. But revelation is communication, a two-way event that requires our participation as well. We have to listen, and listen with spiritual ears\u2014I believe this is what we mean by spiritual preparation; the ability to hear spiritually.<\/p>\n
In celebrating Wilford Woodruff\u2019s birthday, this poem points out the kind of spiritual preparation he had for his calling. Note how often this poem speaks of hearing, and listening.<\/p>\n
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by Sarah E. Pearson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
1898<\/p>\n
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The point of spiritual preparation, and of faith for that matter, is to get us to see the world of the spirit, the world of things that our minds are not trained to see; i.e., the obvious things that are right in front of us but past the surface, that never occurs to us to look at. When we see the whole world, including those things that are clear spiritually, we see more easily the hand of God in our lives and in our world.<\/p>\n
Poet Elizabeth Hill Boswell shows how important seeing this way is. Without spiritual sight, how would we know the Savior, if He were standing in front of us? Boswell is really suggesting that there is a way of seeing more than what is on the surface. How would we know who the Savior is in the middle of a crowd? Wouldn\u2019t we just see him as one more person among many?<\/p>\n
And if we wouldn\u2019t know Him by his outward appearance, what makes us think that we would know Him any other way?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
by Elizabeth Hill Boswell<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1951<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We believe in an active God, a heavenly parent who takes an active interest in our lives, and who acts for the good of His children. While miracles do happen, often God\u2019s help is invisible, arriving through inspiration and less-obvious interventions. Even God\u2019s intervention in the story of Daniel in the Lion\u2019s Den is not necessarily obvious\u2014it wouldn\u2019t have been obvious why the lions didn\u2019t consume Daniel. We are told that God stopped their mouths, but how could they know that it was God? A doubter could easily attribute Daniel\u2019s survival to something else. The subtle and indirect way that God acts leaves room for doubt\u2014and for faith. In a world that believes we should focus decisions only on evidence, it is hard to understand how to rely on faith, and when we are relying on what we want to believe, instead of things that are true. On one hand we have those who only believe what they can see and understand, and on the other we have those who claim faith in false ideas, counter to evidence and based on what they want to believe. Faith exists somewhere in the middle. And there we find that God really delivers. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":55047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/IMG_5098.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54882"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55054,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54882\/revisions\/55054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}