“Hardening-off” is a horticultural term describing the process used to mature and make hardier a succulent plant.  Hardening-off is performed on seedlings before transplanting.  It is accomplished by withholding water to the point of near permanent wilt or by reducing temperature.  Such adverse conditions increase a plant’s ability to withstand cold, the wilting effects of constant winds, intense sunlight and the ravages of sucking insects.

One wonders why it took Lehi’s family eight years to cross the Arabian Peninsula.  The Lord could have enabled them to do that much quicker.  We know very little about what took place during those eight years beyond Nephi’s learning to make a bow, Ishmael’s death, and the fact that they had many travails and hardships, including bearing children in the desert, and living off raw meat.

I suspect that the Lord was hardening them off.  They’d just been taken out of the greenhouse that was Jerusalem where they’d been a wealthy family enjoying all the comforts of the day.  They were being transplanted to a land choice above all others.  If they were to thrive there, the Master Gardener knew that they’d first have to learn the skills of bow making, faith, prayer, providing for themselves, problem solving, navigation, ship building, ore refining, tool making, working together in unity, and reliance upon the Lord and each other.

It was a trial and error learning process that couldn’t be accomplished in a day or a year.

At one point Nephi said simply, “I, Nephi, did make out of wood a bow, and out of a straight stick, an arrow.”  (1 Nephi 16:23).  What he didn’t say was that the bow took him days to make, while the family was starving; and that the usable bow he ended up with was obtained only after making several others which broke the first time he tested them.

My bow-making friend, Randy Newman, pointed out that Nephi wouldn’t have had proper bow-making tools, skills or knowledge.  He wouldn’t have known, for instance, that the wood of a bow has to follow the same growth ring from one end to the other.  He wouldn’t have known how to roll a string from the sinews of an animal.  He wouldn’t have known how to make an arrow point from a rock, or how to attach feathers to an arrow to make it fly straight.  He wouldn’t have known that unless an arrow was made correctly, and made of the proper wood, that when released it might snap in two and go right through the shooter’s arm.

My friend says that it took him years to learn the art of bow making.  Nephi didn’t have that luxury.  But Nephi did have the advantage of learning early in his hardening-off process that he could go to the Lord and obtain any knowledge that he lacked and needed.

But even Nephi apparently needed that eight years of wandering in the desert to become properly hardened-off.  The prophet, Alma, had access to records that we don’t yet have.  He also had possession of the Liahona, or compass, that Lehi was given.  While giving the records and sacred objects to his son, Helaman, Alma told him that their fathers “forgot to exercise their faith and diligence and then (the Liahona) ceased (to work), and they did not progress in their journey.

“Therefore, they tarried in the wilderness, or did not travel a direct course, and were afflicted with hunger and thirst…”  (Alma 37: 41, 42).  The same thing happens to us when we neglect the scriptures.

It was a long, hard schooling process wherein Nephi became hardened-off and refined.  He learned that with the Lord’s help he could do anything and withstand everything.  His faith became sure.

While the Lord was hardening-off Nephi, his brothers were hardening their hearts.  There is a vast difference between the two processes.  They’re opposites.  One is done by the Lord, and is accompanied by steadily increasing faith on the part of the one being hardened-off.  On the other hand, hardening of the heart is done solely by the individual, and is accompanied by doubt and an “I can’t and don’t want to do this” attitude.

The results of the two opposing processes are very admirably portrayed by a dream had by Lucy Mack Smith, mother of Joseph Smith, Jr., several years before he was born.  She had nearly died before experiencing a miraculous healing.  She and her husband, Joseph Smith, Sr., began attending Methodist meetings, but Joseph quit doing so when his brother Jesse found out and “was so displeased and said so much in regard to the matter that (Joseph) thought it best to desist.”  Jesse “was always bitterly opposed to every form of religion.”  (History of Joseph Smith by His Mother Lucy Mack Smith, pg. 43).

Lucy was worried about her husband to the extent that she went to a grove of trees where she says that she “prayed to the Lord in behalf of my husband in that the true gospel might be presented to him and that his heart might be softened so as to receive it, or, that he might become more religiously inclined.”  (Ibid).

She “returned to the house much depressed in spirit,” and in that state eventually went to bed where she had the following dream:

“I thought that I stood in a large and beautiful meadow, which lay a short

distance from the house in which we lived, and that everything around me wore

an aspect of peculiar pleasantness.  The first thing that attracted my special

attention in this magnificent meadow, was a very pure and clear stream of water,

which ran through the midst of it; and as I traced this stream, I discovered two

trees standing upon its margin, both of which were on the same side of the stream.

These trees were very beautiful, they were well proportioned, and towered with

majestic beauty to a great height.  Their branches, which added to their symmetry

and glory, commenced near the top, and spread themselves in luxurious grandeur

around.  I gazed upon them with wonder and admiration; and after beholding them

a short time, I saw one of them was surrounded with a bright belt, that shone like

burnished gold, but far more brilliantly.  Presently, a gentle breeze passed by, and

the tree encircled with this golden zone, bent gracefully before the wind, and waved

its beautiful branches in the light air.  As the wind increased, this tree assumed the

most lively and animate appearance, and seemed to express in its motions the utmost

joy and happiness.  If it had been an intelligent creature, it could not have conveyed,

by the power of language, the idea of joy and gratitude so perfectly as it did; and even

the stream that rolled beneath it, shared, apparently, every sensation felt by the tree,

for, as the branches danced over the stream, it would swell gently, then recede again

with a motion as soft as the breathing of an infant, but as lively as the dancing of a

sunbeam.  The belt also partook of the same influence, and, as it moved in unison

with the motion of the stream and of the tree, it increased continually in refulgence

and magnitude, until it became exceedingly glorious.

“I turned my eyes upon its fellow, which stood opposite; but it was not surrounded

with the belt of light as the former, and it stood erect and fixed as a pillar of marble.

No matter how strong the wind blew over it, not a leaf was stirred, not a bough was

bent; but obstinately stiff it stood, scorning alike the zephyr’s breath, or the power

of the mighty storm.

“I wondered at what I saw, and said in my heart, What can be the meaning of all

this?  And the interpretation given me was, that these personated my husband and

his oldest brother, Jesse Smith; that the stubborn and unyielding tree was like Jesse;

that the other, more pliant and flexible, was like Joseph, my husband; that the breath

of heaven, which passed over them, was the pure and undefiled gospel of the Son of

God, which gospel Jesse would always resist, but which Joseph, when he was more

advanced in life, would hear and receive with his whole heart, and rejoice therein;

and unto him would be added intelligence, happiness, glory, and everlasting life.”

(History of Joseph Smith by His Mother Lucy Mack Smith, pp. 43-45).

The lives of Joseph and Lucy were a hardening-off not unlike that of Lehi and Sariah.  Both couples endured tremendous hardships which they couldn’t fully understand at the time; but which we, in retrospect, can clearly see were designed to place their special sons in particular places at particular times so that they could accomplish particular missions that would have such far-reaching implications that we today are heavily impacted by what they accomplished.

Certainly Lehi and Sariah asked themselves many times if what they were suffering was worth it.  The record states that they each gave way to murmuring on at least one occasion.

Joseph and Lucy had many occasions of deep discouragement as a dishonest ship’s captain absconded with their ginseng fortune, and as they had to give up farm after farm because of summer freezes and unscrupulous land dealers.  They undoubtedly asked “Why me?” and had no way of knowing that the Lord was moving them step by step toward Palmyra where their young son would be properly positioned near the Hill Cumorah where he could be taught by Moroni and be given the Golden Plates.  He had to be right there.  He couldn’t be in Vladivostok, Veracruz or even Vermont.

The Lord’s hand is in the details.  He knows where we’re supposed to be, how to get us there, and what experiences will be for our good along the way.

The First Vision took place at Palmyra.  It was a “First Vision” in more ways than one.  It was Joseph’s first of many visions, but it was also the first and only recorded instance of the Father appearing to any mortal.  Monumental events were about to take place which would have an eternal impact upon all mankind.

Three-and-a-half years elapsed from the time of the Vision before Joseph received any further communication from heaven.  It is appropriate to ask why.  I suspect the answer to be that the Master Gardener was hardening-off the prophet whose responsibility it would be to prepare the world for the Millennium.  The boy was set to embark on nearly a quarter-century of intense, sustained persecution and ill treatment.  He needed to learn how to shrug off criticism, people’s mockery and disapproval, and how to stand alone when seemingly everyone was against him.

It was a very difficult three-and-a-half years.  In his own words:

“I soon found…that my telling the story (of the First Vision) had excited a great deal of prejudice  against me among professors of religion, and was the cause of great persecution, which continued to increase; and though I was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and my circumstances in life such as to make a boy of no consequence in the world, yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me, and create a bitter persecution; and this was common among all the sects—all united to persecute me.

“It caused me serious reflection then, and often has since, how very strange it was that an obscure boy, of a little over fourteen years of age, and one, too, who was doomed to the necessity of obtaining a scanty maintenance by his daily labor, should be thought a character of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the great ones of the most popular sects of the day, and in a manner to create in them a spirit of the most bitter persecution and reviling.  But strange or not, so it was, and it was often the cause of great sorrow to myself.”  (Joseph Smith—History 1: 22, 23).

Between the ages of 14 and 17 nearly everyone but Joseph’s family persecuted him, reviled him, and spoke all manner of evil against him falsely.  The persecution extended even to his family.  Surely such adverse conditions hardened him off and increased his ability to withstand cold, the wilting effects of constant winds, intense scrutiny, and the ravages of evil men of every sort.

Each of us will, at some stage in our lives, reach the point of near permanent wilt.  It is imperative that we resist the urge to murmur, that we hang on, and that we realize the adverse conditions will be for our good.  The Master Gardener hardens-off His transplants to prepare them for a better world.