Of Wells and Arks: Doing the Next and Necessary Thing
Since I’m speaking first, I’ll take a few minutes to introduce our family. We moved here in July of 2019, so we’re coming up on seven full years here, which is the longest that I have ever lived anywhere in my entire life—and by extension it’s also the longest my children have lived anywhere. Although I’m sure many of our children—particularly our youngest few—feel as if we’ve been here a lifetime, I don’t actually feel like we’ve been here very long at all. I’ve just never felt very settled here. Perhaps I don’t know how to settle. I don’t know…
But, here we are! We’re the Heisses. We have six kids. Our oldest Rachel is a freshman at BYU. Then there’s Miriam, who you hear at the organ each Sunday. Next is Benjamin, who made a goal this year to bake bread whenever he’s assigned to bring bread for the sacrament. Zoë is enjoying her last year of primary; she’s very excited to enter the Young Women program next year. Alexander was baptized this past November. And Phoebe is four and…we just…celebrate…that we’ve been able to get her to attend her own class. She’s very clingy.
She describes herself as “snuggly,” but she’s clingy.
Andrew is in the Elder’s Quorum presidency and he is a professor at Georgia State University. I am in the primary—I’m the music leader, a calling I absolutely adore—and I’m currently—yes, still—working on my PhD at the University of Georgia. I’m studying literacies and children’s literature, with a particular focus on religious literacies. I think understanding religion—both your own faith and that of others—is so important. The eleventh article of faith is kind of my jam:
We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience and allow all men the same privilege. Let them worship how, where, or what they may.
And what a privilege it is to be here with you today.
Growing up, my mom kept some of those big Books of Remembrance. Does anyone remember those? They’re just huge! I think I might be remembering them bigger than they were in real life because I was small the last time I remember my mom really pulling them out—computers have revolutionized the way we do family history work. Anyway, she filled these books with family group sheets and things in an attempt to tame the tangled undergrowth of our family tree.
I noticed that beside certain names on the family group sheet my mom had simply written BIC—bee eye see—BIC. I remember asking my mom what that meant because while I was familiar with many church acronyms—CTR, BYU, LDS—I had never before encountered BIC. She explained that it meant the children in that family had been “born in the covenant”—BIC. They didn’t need to be sealed to their parents because they had been born to parents who had already been through the temple and entered into the Abrahamic Covenant, or what we call the new and everlasting covenant.
The Come Follow Me manual (The Church, 2025) explains the Abrahamic Covenant very well in February’s “Thoughts to Keep in Mind” section, which I won’t rehash too much here (so be sure to go read that). But I was struck with the idea that the Abrahamic Covenant was a way of establishing a relationship of trust between God and Abraham. God made promises of great blessing to Abraham (promises that often seemed impossible) and in return Abraham and his seed were to “bear this ministry and Priesthood unto all nations,” so that “all the families of the earth [can] be blessed, even with the blessings of the Gospel, which are the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal.”
The Abrahamic Covenant, then, is not just for Abraham. It’s for all of us—and for everyone in every nation. It’s for those born in the covenant and it’s for those…not…born in the covenant.
In theory this concept sounds both expansive and inclusive, so it’s quizzical to me that the immediate application was both divisive and exclusionary. I think sometimes the blessings of the temple can feel that way as well—for example, my own father wasn’t able to attend my marriage and sealing. So I was very excited when in May 2019 the policy surrounding temple sealings changed (Nelson et al., 2019) and allowed for couples to be married civilly and then to immediately get sealed in the temple (because prior to this they had to wait for at least a year after getting married before they could be sealed). So that was a positive change, in my view.
But going back to Abraham, we know that he eventually had two sons—first Ishmael and then Isaac. And it seems there was quite a lot of resentment between the mothers of the children, and understandably so. For one thing, Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, was enslaved to Sarah, Isaac’s mother. And then Sarah felt a bit of jealousy toward Hagar, I think, and sometimes felt as if Hagar was mocking her—for her inability to have children probably. Hagar actually ran away from Sarah and Abraham while she was pregnant with Ishmael after Sarah dealt harshly with her. So she was just pregnant…wandering around in the desert…with no apparent destination in mind except away from that. And an angel of the Lord comes to her.
In Sisters in the Wilderness, Delores S. Williams points out that “God’s response to Hagar’s story in the Hebrew testament is not liberation. Rather, God participates in Hagar’s and her child’s survival on two occasions” (p. 4). In this first instance an angel of the Lord comes to her and instructs her to “return to [her] mistress, and submit [herself] under her hands.” He wants her to go back to Abram and Sarai, which must have felt like a hard thing for her to do. But before sending her on her way, the angel of the Lord says to her in Genesis 16:10–11, “I will multiply thy seed exceedingly.” This is a very similar promise to the one that God gave to Abraham—which makes sense because her child is Abraham’s child. “I will multiply thy seed exceedingly that it shall not be numbered for multitude. Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the Lord hath heard thy affliction.”
The name Ishmael literally means “God hears.”
So Hagar returns and things go…okay…for a few years. And then when Ishmael turns 13, Sarah finally conceives and bears Isaac to Abraham who is at this point, like, 99 years old. Hagar makes light of this somehow. I’m going to interrupt this story to tell you that…
During our family scripture study we use various translations of The Bible. Some of us read from the King James Version and some of us read from the New Revised Standard Version and sometimes we read in other languages. This opens up avenues of discussion for us, as we talk about how things were translated or phrased in whatever version we have in front of us. It…keeps things interesting. On the day that we read Genesis 21 together, I was reading from Robert Alter’s translation of The Bible and I was so touched by the narrative of Hagar.
So Sarah was upset…
And she said to Abraham, “Drive out this slavegirl and her son, for the slavegirl’s son shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac.” And the thing seemed evil in Abraham’s eyes because of his son [Ishmael]. And God said to Abraham, “Let it not seem evil in your eyes on account of the lad and on account of your slavegirl. Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice, for through Isaac shall your seed be acclaimed. But the slavegirl’s son, too, will I make a nation, for he is your seed.”
And Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, placing them on her shoulder, and he gave her the child, and sent her away, and she went wandering through the wilderness of Beersheba. And when the water in the skin was gone, she flung the child under one of the bushes and went off and sat down at a distance…for she thought, “Let me not see when the child dies.” And she sat at a distance and raised her voice and wept.
And God heard the voice of the lad [so Ishmael must have been praying, too] and God’s messenger called out from the heavens and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the lad’s voice where he is. Rise, lift up the lad and hold him by the hand, for a great nation will I make him.”
And God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad to drink. And God was with the lad, and he grew up and dwelled in the wilderness….
I don’t think we talk enough about Hagar and how hard this was for her and how the Lord had such a beautiful plan for her. In the October 1995 General Conference, Sister Aileen H. Clyde the Second Counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency said, “When I think of lifesaving water and of wells, I also think of Hagar…We, like Hagar, are required to see ‘a well of water.’ We, like the woman at the well, must ask of the Lord: ‘Give me this water, that I thirst not’ (John 4:15).”
Sister Clyde goes on to urge us to “See the well. Ask for the water that you ‘thirst not.’ Obtain the promises which are held out to you by a loving Father in Heaven through the atonement of his Only Begotten Son, he who promised, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give [her] shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give [her] shall be in [her] a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).”
This, I think, is how we enter into that relationship of trust with God, how we enter into the Abrahamic Covenant, the new and everlasting covenant. We see the wells, we partake of the water—and (this part is very important) we share that water with others. In primary last year we talked a lot about finding our own Sacred Grove (Killian, 2024/2019) and the many different experiences people have that are akin to the Sacred Grove moment. This year we’ve been learning a song about Noah called “Build an Ark” (Porter, 2026/2003), which was recently released in the new collection of hymns. The first verse talks about Noah and the second talks about how we can be like Noah and build our own ark—our “faith is like an ark,” the song tells us, “it can help [us] be secure.” We’ve talked a bit about other boats that have been instrumental to saving God’s people at times—“the Lord commanded Nephi to go and build a boat” (Hansen & Hansen, 1989/1986; 1 Nephi 17), the people of Ether built boats (Ether 2).
After we’d been talking about this song and boats and arks for a few weeks, Sister Hurdsmith shared with me that it seemed to her that all these boats and arks were kind of like the temple. I completely agree. It certainly seems like these boats—from the beginnings of their construction to the moment of deliverance in a promised land—these boats are an enactment of that relationship of trust between the Lord and his people.
See the well. Ask for the water.
Find your grove. Kneel to pray.
Build the ark. Go on the journey.
And just see what the Lord has in store for you.
This sounds so beautiful to me…except for the fact that I don’t particularly like living by faith.
I’m going to be honest, it’s not my favourite thing. More often than not, I relate to Hagar, sitting off at a distance and crying about my problems because I just don’t see a way out. But isn’t it reassuring to know that even in moments when our faith feels weak or insufficient, the Lord can find us in our wilderness. He may not liberate us, as Delores Williams pointed out—he may not come with a remedy for our trials, but he does come to save us, to help us survive, to lead us to the well, to inspire us to do what we need to do next.
Carl Jung (1973/1933) theorized that life is not and cannot be “know[n] in advance, and…simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other” and “do with conviction the next and most necessary thing” (pp. 132–3). He talks of this like it’s a guide for how to live life without a religion telling you “what’s what” (p. 132), but to me it sounds like a guide for how to live a life of faith.
God didn’t come to Hagar in the wilderness to fix her life. He came to Hagar in the wilderness to help her to see the next and most necessary thing—a well, water.
This is a hard concept for me, but I have a testimony that it’s true. Like the pioneers we have faith in every footstep, right? (Dayley, 1997/1996). Brigham Young didn’t say “This is the place!” until the pioneers had—more or less—arrived where they needed to be (The Church, 2004, p. 146). We are always guided to the next good thing. I find this both wonderful…and incredibly annoying.
When Andrew was fresh out of grad school, I remember the job search being soul crushing. It took us three years to find a job. We had a temporary contract for one year and didn’t find a permanent position in that time. We managed to finagle another one-year contract and then finally he was offered—and accepted—a permanent position, only to have them call us the next day and tell us that they couldn’t actually give us the job. And I remember thinking about this disappointment, wondering if we’d ever find a real job offer, and basically just wanting to run into the wilderness to cry.
The words of ‘Lead, kindly Light’ (Newman, 1985/1833) kept running through my head—much to my annoyance:
Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom;
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene—one step enough for me.
And I remember screaming back at these words in my head, “No! One step is not enough for me! I want multiple steps! I want to see The Plan!” God continually seems to offer me wells when what I want is an oasis. But, through many disappointments and hardships, I have never been left alone in the desert. There has always been a well to sustain me on my journey of faith until God shows me the next well.
Obviously the job thing eventually worked out. In retrospect we can see the blessings that came from that time of uncertainty, we can see why we needed to follow the particular meandering journey we were being led on. We’re here now, resting at the well with all of you.
At a recent commencement address at Brigham Young University–Hawaii, Elder Patrick Kearon (2023) told graduates, “Your next steps may well be into the unknown—and indeed, there will be many such thresholds in your life, when much ahead is uncharted. But if you “put your hand into the Hand of God,”
If you look for the well, build the ark, enter the grove, go to the temple, take the next step along the covenant path…whether you were born in the covenant or not…
“His guidance ‘shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’”
That is also my testimony.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Scriptures referenced
Article of Faith 11
Genesis 16:10–11
Genesis 21 (Alter translation)
John 4:14–5
1 Nephi 17
Ether 2
Works Cited
Clyde, A. H. (1995, October). What Is Relief Society for? The Ensign. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/eng/general-conference/1995/10/what-is-relief-society-for
Dayley, K. N. (1997, January). Faith in every footstep. Ensign. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/music (Original work published 1996)
Hansen, B. N., & Hansen, W. N. (1989). Nephi’s courage. In Children’s songbook of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (p. 120). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/eng/manual/childrens-songbook/nephis-courage (Original work published 1986)
Jung, C. G., Adler, G., Jaffé, A., & Hull, R. F. C. (1973). Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 1906-1950. Taylor and Francis. (Original work published 1933)
Kearon, P. (2023, December 8). Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown. BYUH Speeches. https://speeches.byuh.edu/commencements/give-me-a-light-that-i-may-tread-safely-into-the-unknown
Killian, A. (2024, January). My own sacred grove. The Friend. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/music (Original work published 2019)
Nelson, R. M., Oaks, D. H., & Eyring, H. B. (2019, May 6). Discontinuation of one-year waiting period after civil marriage [Letter]. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/eng/ensign/2019/06/digital-only-news/waiting-period-no-longer-required
Newman, J. H., & Dykes, J. B. (1985). Lead, kindly light. In Hymns. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/music (Original work published 1833)
Porter, M. (2026). Build an ark. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Hymns—For Home and Church. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/eng/music/hymns-for-home-and-church/build-an-ark (Original work published 2003)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (2025). Thoughts to keep in mind: The covenant. In Come, follow me—For home and church: Old Testament 2026 (p. 55). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/eng/manual/come-follow-me-for-home-and-church-old-testament-2026/07-thoughts
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (2004). Teachings of presidents of the church: Wilford Woodruff. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/shared/content/english/pdf/language-materials/36315_eng.pdf?lang=eng
Williams, D. S. (1993). Sisters in the wilderness: The challenge of womanist God-talk (Nachdr.). Orbis Books.
Lovely!
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