Take Action!

"Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.

Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion." (2 Nephi 8:24-25)

I hear phrases like "Awake, awake, and put on thy strength" and "Shake thyself from the dust" and "loose thyself from the bands of thy neck" and I can't help but imagine someone who is "captive", but they really aren't guarded well, and they could leave when they want.  From their perspective, they have been captured and they must sit there and remain the rest of their days in captivity.  However, if they just decided one day to take some action and leave, they could do it.  Would it be hard and dangerous?  Probably, but totally doable.  Some action on the captive's part is required, though, to make it happen.

We are like that sometimes.  From God's perspective, we are in the exact same boat.  There is a way to escape captivity, whatever our own personal captivity looks like.  Maybe it's addiction, maybe it's depression, maybe it's a lack of faith, it doesn't matter.  What matters is that we feel trapped, like we have to stay in that spot until someone comes and rescues us.  And while it is possible that someone will intervene in our lives, and rescue us, the truth of the matter is that we've already been rescued through the atonement of Christ.  Yet we just sit there, thinking we're stuck.  Sometimes we need someone to just shake us and say "WAKE UP!"  We need some prodding sometimes and some help to do those things, but the nice thing is that we have the power within ourselves to do them.  We are amazing and Heavenly Father has given us more capacity to act than we will ever know.  Not only that, but He will help us as we try to do what he wants us to do.  Sometimes, all he needs from us is the slightest beginning of action, and then He will help us.  But if He swoops in and rescues us without having to do anything on our part, He's pretty much taking away our agency, which is EXTREMELY important to him.

I know we all get discouraged and frustrated sometimes, and feel trapped.  But "Awake" and "Shake thyself from the dust" and "loose thyself from the bands of thy neck"!  You can do it, I can do it.  He is there waiting to help us out, but we need to take that first step.  How sad if we don't, and we end up looking back at our lives and realize that the door of opportunity was wide open, but we never went through it.