My husband and I have started reading the Book of Mormon aloud together in the evenings. We decided we needed to close out our days on a higher note than we'd been doing. We've tried family scripture study with varying degrees of success over the years, but this is quite different. When it's just the two of us (or three, when our son joins occasionally if he's around), no one gets bugged if we stop reading for a minute and bring up what's on our minds. The slower pace mandated by reading out loud allows for better thinking time, a greater chance to digest what's being read. And, of course, because the whole world turns around in the course of a year (not just literally, but figuratively as well), I'm reading with new needs and hence new eyes.

I've been struck this past week by the Lord's plan for his people as manifested by the people of Limhi and Alma and their escape from bondage. It's in Mosiah 21-24, if you want to read along. This has always been one of my favorite parts of the Book of Mormon because of how the Lord eased their burdens upon their backs so they could bear them "with ease" (Mosiah 24:15), but this time through I found myself fascinated by the string of "coincidences" involved in these chapters. Whenever I see a "coincidence" in the scriptures, I just substitute "hand of the Lord." From that vantage point, consider this:

1. The people of Limhi–a whole colony, with women and children and animals–flee through the back pass, and their Lamanite pursuers lose their tracks after two days and get lost in the wilderness (22:16). Really? A group of warriors can't catch up with a war-weakened civilization or even follow the trail they left?

2. The lost Lamanites, wandering through the wilderness, just happen upon Amulon and the other wicked priests of king Noah, whom Limhi and his people had been unsuccessful in finding although they had made a diligent effort to do so. Amulon's group joins up with them.

3. Amulon and the Lamanites, trying to find their way back home, just happen upon Alma and his group in the land of Helam and bring them into subjection.

That feels like a whole lot of coincidences to me. So when I see the hand of the Lord working in that way, I ask, "Why?" I understand why he would confound the Lamanites so that Limhi's people could get safely away, but why bring them down on Alma's people? And then it occurs to me that Alma's people were happily established in the wilderness. They were prospering. They were doing just fine. It's possible–likely, even–that they never would have made their way to Zarahemla to join up with king Mosiah and the body of the Nephites if they hadn't been driven there by their persecutions. And clearly the Lord needed them there, because Alma's whole purpose became to build up churches and establish God's world throughout the land among the Nephites and the even more numerous Mulekites.

I'm trying to remember that although the Lord wants us to prosper and do just fine, sometimes he wants more for us than we have envisioned for ourselves. And sometimes it takes some really hard things happening to drive us to where He needs us to be. I'm not saying that He sends the affliction, necessarily–mortality has a way of providing plenty of afflictions all on its own. But I do think that He sometimes stays His hand from preventing our trials, although he then intervenes in other ways (easing our burdens on our backs) so that we know He hasn't forsaken us. He can give purpose to all the circumstances of our mortality. Our task becomes to "submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord" (Mosiah 24:15), believing that he has more in mind for us than we could ever have thought of.