Ether 6

It's hard to imagine what the Jaredites went through in crossing the ocean. Just to put out to sea and trust the Lord to take you somewhere would be frightening. It says that many times they were buried under deep waves. To endure all this for 344 days must have been especially difficult. It says that they prayed and sang hymns to sustain their faith. In my own life, when I have been in a scary or difficult situation, I found myself turning more to prayer and to hymns. When there is no where else to turn, no one else to rely on, and faced with something that we cannot control, we turn to the Lord. And then like the Jaredites, when we're delivered from whatever the difficulty was, we realize how much we owe the Lord. It says that when the Jaredites finally arrived on land, "they shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them." Sometimes those tears of joy are also shed when good things happen that we had thought weren't possible for our lives. The Lord does have tender feelings for each of us, cares about us deeply, and wants us to have happiness and joy in life. There will be the inevitable difficulties and tragedies that are a part of mortality's experience. There will be no one better to turn to at those times. But, there is joy in life also, and we ought to remember his at those times too.