Sunday, September 4, 2011

Birthday Musings

I had my birthday on Tuesday, so I"m now one year older and (I hope) wiser too. Maybe because I just had my birthday, and I've now lived on earth for 22 years, I've been thinking a lot about earth-life. Why do we come to here? What is our purpose? I do know that we lived with God before and that we came to earth to become like Him; to get a physical body and to be tested 1.

To be tested? How does that work? God knows us perfectly, He knows what decisions we are going to make, and how we are going to turn out. Why do we need to be tested if God already knows what is going to happen?

I have thought about this a lot. And I think that it comes down to two things. First, we are tested so we can know for ourselves, and second, without the experiences of earth-life we would never become the people that we can be.

So- for the first part, yes, God knows what choices we will make but we are not all-knowing, so we don't. I think it is like when we were little kids and our parents would dish up our plate with food and sometimes they wouldn't put something on it and we would say "Hey, what about that raspberry pie?".  They would say "I know you, you don't like raspberries, so you are not going to like raspberry pie. You are just going to leave it on your plate and not eat it." They may have been perfectly correct but when they said that I always wanted it even more. Unless I had the pie on my plate and actually had the opportunity to eat it or not, I was never really sure if I would have. Our Heavenly Father knows, but we don't. We wont be able to stand before the judgment bar of God knowing that our Heavenly Father is sending us to the right place unless we are tested. We come to earth so we can know for ourselves and be able to "acknowledge... that all His judgements are just"2.

The second reason, I think, is the most important. Life is sometimes, even often, hard, difficult, and painful. It seems so unfair. Why would a loving God send us to such a place? Our Heavenly Father knows our potential, but we cannot reach that potential without the trails and growth that come from life. I will admit it, a mission is hard. You are away from friends, family, and the familiar, doing things that are not easy or natural, and working harder than you probably ever have before. But because it is so hard I think I have learned more and grown more in these last two-and-a-half months than I did in the previous two-and-a-half years. There is no way I could have not gone on my mission and had someone come to me and say, "So, if you would have gone on a mission you would have learned this, and gained that attribute, and you would know how to do such and such. Those things are all now a part of your character." I can't learn those lessons, get those attributes, or know how to do those things without having experiences where I learn, gain, or do something new. Before we came to earth we had grown as much as we could. We couldn't reach our potential and become the people our loving Heavenly Father knows we could become without the opportunity of coming to earth.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that I'm a little older today than I was last week and I might be a little bit wiser than I was too: but I've come to the conclusion that that is what life is. A time to get older, grow, learn, experience, and to prepare ourselves to once again meet God; with both Him, and now us, knowing who we are, who we have become, and who we can continue to become into the eternities.       

1. Preach My Gospel "Agency and the Fall of Adam and Eve p.49
2. Alma 12:15

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