DAY 92 -- Cheerfully!

It never ceases to amaze me to read about Alma in the wilderness.  He was in a type of bondage to Amulon, a former Priest of King Noah.  Alma and his people were even prevented from praying, yet they raised their hearts to God.

It is reported that God was so impressed with their endurance, their "submitting cheerfully" that he said he would release them from bondage.  I wonder when we are given "bondage" type trials, if we submit to them "cheerfully," will He look to release us from our bondage.  I often wonder looking back over my blessings of bondage, my trials, if I endured them cheerfully?  It reports in the book of Mosiah that He made their bondage light.  The trial was lessened.  It was easier to endure them.  I wonder if He does that today.  In the trials we get to endure, I wonder if He makes it easier to endure, to live through?  Perhaps he does and we just don't realize it.  Perhaps we are released from our bondage and we don't thank Him for His management of our burdens.  Do we always see His hand when it is there?

Our financial bondage has been one of many years.  I find when I dwell upon those trials, the debt that was unfair in the first place, the debt that kept showing up years after the bowling in Brigham, etc, I wonder if we were released from what it could have been?  Though lingering, added debt kept showing up demanding attention, perhaps rather than look at the unexpected debt that kept appearing, we should have looked at the debt as a lesser of two, or three or four other debts that we did not get.  Our financial bondage is almost eliminated.  Figuratively the doors will open, we shall walk out free of debt and bondage.  Our debt prison will be released and we will be free.  Did we submit cheerfully while enduring it?  Not as cheerfully as we could have, or should I say, as I could have.