The most beautiful woman in the world made a statement on M* that brings up an important point.
…another comment that bothers me is when people say ” The Lord knows we wanted a child, or we wanted many children and has blessed us because of this desire”. Well if desire was all it took I would have at least 5 by now. I have always desired to have many children.
Which raises the question, what does God use as a basis for blessings?
Already, Mary has shown us that it cannot be our desire for that blessing. Many people who desire a certain blessing yet never receive it. Alternatively, many people who do desire the same blessing still receive it.
What about obedience? Does a person?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s obedience to the commandments affect the likelihood of receiving a blessing? Back to the fertility example: there are many obedient people who never get pregnant, and many disobedient ones who do. Therefore, that cannot be it.
What about prayer? Same thing. Many people pray for it and never get it. Many people never pray for it and still get it.
Certainly, God does not just arbitrarily pick blessings to send to us. Or does he?
I used to teach that there are two types of bad things that happen to us in life — the ones we bring on ourselves and the ones that just happen — and the key is to minimize the first category via obedience to God. Then I learned that Elder Maxwell had a list of three causes. I included the two I mentioned but added the bad things that God deliberately sends our way sometimes to stretch us and refine us.
Not getting what we desperately pray for is a bad thing in our life. Perhaps that third category really is the proper explanation. The scriptures seem replete with similar testing and stretching stories…
“the bad things that God deliberately sends our way sometimes to stretch us and refine us. “
I don’t believe God sends us bad things, not like in the olden days where locusts and floods etc were sent to earth. My father and only sister died not that long ago from cancer. My dad was 58 and my sister was 46. I don’t for one second believe that God sent them cancer and took them away from our family to make us stretch! What we get or don’t get in this life is in direct proportion to what we do and don’t do. If you fill your body with harmful substance such as alcohol and tobacco, or even overabundance of processed foods, chances are it will kill you. God isn’t going to step in. It was our choice to live like that.
As for whether or not we get what we pray for when others around us seem to get what they pray for, I again don’t see Heavenly Father playing a game of Russian Roulette with our lives and saying eenie meenie mynie mo, this family gets a child and you get none. Life doesn’t work that way. But I plan to ask him that very question when I see him though. Just cause it “appears” that others get what they pray for when we don’t doesn’t necessarily mean we know all that is going on between them and Heavenly Father. We are not privy to what goes on with Him and other people.
One example that comes to mind is about 24 years ago we wanted to have more children so my husband, (who had had a vasectomy when he had been married before) agreed to have it reversed. He did this not one but twice. He had the same surgeon as another member in our ward who was doing the same thing. Second marriage for him and he had had a vasectomy in his previous one. Both men had their reversals. The other guy ended up having 2 more children after his reversal while although my husband had his reversal done twice, we weren’t blessed with anymore. I didn’t get it. Same situation, same surgeon, same procedure. One worked one didn’t. Years later when we had 3-16 year olds and 2-14 year olds under our roof at the same time, I understood why we hadn’t been able to have more children. Heavenly Father knew more about my patience limits then I did and He knew that sending me anymore babies would have pushed me over the edge.
Another example is when I used to work as a RN. We had 2 male patients come in the middle of the night by ammbulance from 2 small towsn with the exact same symptoms, yellow skin, severe pain in abdomen, vomiting etc. They ended up having the same internist. After 2 days of identical tests, one result came back as Hepatitis and the other result came back as Liver Cancer. One was healed with medication and the other had less then 6 months to live. I don’t believe God played with their lives either and chose who to let live and who to die.
Well, what do you know. Here I am in my thirties finding out for the first time that my dad had a vasectomy.
Mum, you should start a blog. Then I can find out about these sorts of things more frequently.
Anyhow, back to the topic. based on your comments, do you take the stand that God’s blessings are arbitrary? Or do you think there is something else God uses as the basis for extending blessings?
smiles said:
“I don’t believe God sends us bad things, not like in the olden days where locusts and floods etc were sent to earth. My father and only sister died not that long ago from cancer. My dad was 58 and my sister was 46. I don’t for one second believe that God sent them cancer and took them away from our family to make us stretch!”
To say that you don’t believe that God sent them cancer (which is probably true) is not equivalent to God never sending bad things (which in many cases I actually feel is his withdrawing of a blessing or protection which we have taken for granted or abused).
“One was healed with medication and the other had less then 6 months to live. I don’t believe God played with their lives either and chose who to let live and who to die.”
So God can’t play God? When was this restriction placed upon Him and whom was brazen enough to try, let alone succeed?
If God wants to choose who lives and who dies, I think that He, as our creator, has that right. After all, he’s trying to bring about our immortality and eternal life, and I submit that He knows far more about it than we do.
I believe that our current state of affairs are a conflation of our natural state and God’s intervention. This exists for every individual. Receiving a desired change (by divine intervention) in the current state of affairs requires only one thing: Faith.
I know that it sounds goofy. But there is a difference between desire, belief and faith. The latter describes the relationship of love and trust with the Divine. The more extraordinary the desire, the consequent need for extraordinary faith.
I look at it in terms of a kid wanting to borrow a stranger’s new Porche. It is not going to happen. But if a relationship of love and trust developes…
Surmounting physical laws is difficult, whether it be changing physiology to have a baby or walking on water. And I don’t see this as hyperbolic. There was once a time when I had great faith, sadly those time have passed. However, I still believe that one can have the faith to receive.
I believe in the comment that God may or will withdraw blessings and His protection from us when we do wrong. I truly beleive in that. I believe that He does have a “method” to the way he “hands out” blessings but I also believe none of us will ever know what that method is until we get there ourselves. It is like trying to figure out what it will be like for our souls once we die. We all speculate. There have been dozens of books written on the subject but really and truly we don’t know.
We have a LOT of high speed car crashes here involving teens and alcohol and deaths. There was one just 2 nights ago where this sports car was stuck literally in a tree and was so crushed together from the impact you didn’t even know it was a car in the tree. All 5 kids were killed none were wearing seatbelts.
Did Heavenly Father choose this end for them? I would like to think not but again I don’t know. I would like to go through life believing that he is a just and loving Father and would not want to wish an end of a life of one of His children like that.
He gave us all choices in life. If we choose to live it without his blessings that is our choice and we need to accept the consequences of our actions. But on the other hand what does that say for those that feel they are truly living their lives accordingly and still aren’t getting the blessings they want? Maybe it’s just that we are asking for the wrong things. Or we are getting our answers, we just choose not to listen to them because it’s not the “right” answer that we want.
Does that make me naive? Maybe. Yes I also beleive HE does have the right to choose who dies and lives but I don’t believe that it’s a simple and clear cut as we try and make it out to be. I am sure there are a lot of litigating circumstances that are involved otherwise we would all just die peacefully in our sleep.
Sorry Kim about not knowing about the vasectomy.. I thought you all knew that. It was before my time when Dad was with Susan and she didn’t want any more kids. What else don’t you know about? :)
“What else don’t you know about?”
How would I know?