I had a conversation with a good friend a few weeks ago about our trials and Heavenly Father knowing what we are experiencing and wondered whether we knew exactly what trials we would have in life. We had a difference of opinion about this last part. Now, my friend is older and wiser than I am and he has done quite a bit more gospel study, so I of course may be very wrong and just have not discovered the right answer yet.
The scriptures in the assignment tell us that all things were created spiritually before they were created physically, that we in fact were created spiritually and lived with Father in Heaven before we were born on the earth, and that there were those who were chosen to do certain things before we came to the earth. But it doesn't seem to me through all of scripture that what we were chosen to do was given to us in minute detail. Maybe we were so deliriously happy at the chance to come to earth that we accepted any trail? Maybe we stood in line for certain trials that we thought we could handle? It just seems contrary to the truth of moral agency and the human experience, that we would choose a certain situation or trial before coming to earth, even though the veil would have erased any knowledge about those choices.
I don't really see how having information such as this would help me through the trial anyway. I know some people do find comfort in this thought though. That the trial they are going through is something that they chose before so, they know they can handle it. But how would they have possibly known that they could have handled it while only possessing a spirit and not the actual body necessary to experience it? Does this make any sense?
To me, the fact (or non-fact) that I chose a certain trial has no importance or sway over the trial that I am going through currently. That piece of information can not take away my trial, nor can it help remove sorrow, hurt, anguish or anger over the trial. In fact, I think believing that I chose to have diabetes, for instance, would make me even more angry with myself. Maybe. I really don't see how knowing a fact like that would bear sway over where I end up after this life anyway. What matters is the kind of person I become through the trial/experience. This is what I focus on. Right now anyway. Like I said, I could be way off base and it could just be unitelligable reasoning.
What do you think?
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I tend to agree with you. It doesn't make sense to me that we would pick out what trials we want. I think Heavenly Father knows us and what we need individually to grow spiritually and at what time in our lives.
ReplyDeleteI can't say if we forsaw some trials that we would face here, but in my mind that doesn't really make a difference either. I find comfort when I try to rely on the Lord and trust in His judgement of what trials I need. (sounds so easy) In 1 Cor. 10:13 we read, the Lord "will not suffer you to be tempted above that which ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." Maybe I am off, but I feel like "tempted" in this verse is substitutable with "tried". I think when we rely on our Saviour through trials that is how we escape and are able to bear things we are not sure we have enough strength for.