Lifted to Tuna

My brother's cat, Velox, likes tuna, but she doesn't like being picked up, so when the tuna she was looking for was up on an appliance, and she didn't know where it was, she was in a bit of a bind. Fortunately for her, my brother picked her up, despite her protest, and got her to the tuna she wanted, even though that wasn't necessarily how she wanted to get there.

I imagine that this situation plays out fairly often with us. We want blessings, and God knows how to get us those blessings, but unfortunately, the way to get the blessings isn't always as smooth or pleasant as we would like. There are times when, through various afflictions, God helps us get the blessings we want, despite the temporary discomfort we have to experience to get them.

If we really want the blessings we're looking for, we should learn to trust God enough to get us to them, even if the path to our blessings is harder than any that we would willingly choose to follow. We should learn to let God lift us up to the blessings He offers us, even though that means letting our feet leave the ground. We have to give up some of our comfort and control, but what we get in exchange is worth it. In the end, Velox was grateful enough for the tuna to be willing to forgive my brother for picking her up. When we receive our promised blessings, I'm sure we'll be grateful enough for them to forgive God for whatever He had to do to help us get them.

Thank God for Unnoticed Blessings

I didn't stain any of my church clothes today. We were having dinner, and I spilled some salsa on my shirt, and I didn't notice, but I had to go to the bathroom, and that's when I noticed that I had spilled salsa on my shirt, and I was able to clean it up before any stains set in. Naturally, you could call it a coincidence that I had to go to the bathroom immediately after spilling on myself, but I'm not sure that it was. God is very good at being extremely subtle. He can pull strings and work miracles in ways that seem like mere coincidences. Granted, I'm not sure why He does this. Being a bit more open about His influence would make it easier for people to have faith in Him. But I'm sure He has His reasons for making His blessings subtle enough to go unnoticed.

This experience has made me wonder how many blessings God gives me that I don't notice. How many times has He saved me from problems that I never had because He spared me from them? How many times has He worked miracles that seemed like coincidences, luck, or just nature taking its course? How many ties have I failed to thank God for blessings I didn't even notice receiving?

I should thank God more often, and I should serve Him more, to partially pay Him back for the blessings He thanklessly gives me. I'm sure I receive far more blessings than I notice. I should make a point to thank God for the blessings that go unnoticed.

Tricky Puzzles and the Tellers of Truth

Life would be so much simpler if liars were incapable of telling the truth. There are a handful of puzzles in which one individual always tells the truth, and another individual always lies, and you have to ask them tricky questions to find out who's telling the truth and whose information you can trust. Unfortunately, life is more complicated than that. Liars can sometimes tell the truth, and truth-tellers can sometimes tell untruths by accident due to having inaccurate information. Figuring out who's lying and who's telling the truth can be incredibly difficult, especially when people can tell the truth when it suits them or say what they believe is true, but still be wrong.

I'm not sure there are any clever questions one could ask to discern who's right and who's wrong in real life. Instead, I think the Spirit of Discernment is needed. God knows the truth, and He tells it through His Spirit, Prophets, Apostles, and scriptures. We can learn what's true by turning to reliable sources, and the most reliable of all sources is God. So long as we're in-tune with The Spirit (and the spirit we're in tune to is The Holy Spirit rather than an unholy one), we can learn the truth about just about anything we could ever need to know, including who's telling the truth.

Unlike in tricky puzzle riddles, real-world liars aren't always lying, and honest people aren't always right. So, we need to be careful, and we need to make sure we get our most important and trusted information from the Ones who are always honest and always right.

Let Them Learn From Us

Today, I was reminded of a fortunately fictional story in which a man erases practically all human knowledge in existence, at least partly to cover up the devastating mistakes he had made. This is, of course, unproductive and ultimately extremely selfish. The man was right to worry about his legacy, but the right thing to do would have been to let others learn about the mistake he had made, in hopes that they would be wise enough not to repeat them. He should try not to be ashamed to learn from our mistakes and help others learn from them, too. Part of the reason we're on this Earth is to learn from experiences and mistakes, both our own and others'. It's difficult to do that if we aren't willing to share our experiences and even our mistakes with others.

We all make mistakes. When we do, it would be wise to try to learn from our mistakes, and it'd be good to help others learn from them as well.

Missionary Work vs Sharing the Gospel

Tonight, we had dinner with the missionaries, and they encouraged us to share the gospel with others. We call this doing "missionary work," but I don't know if we should call it that. Work has a negative connotation, and we should avoid the implication that this role/task/activity is something that is primarily done by full-time missionaries.

Rather, I think we should call it "sharing the Gospel," because sharing is a good, generous thing that people do for the benefit of others, whereas work is an arduous thing that people do because they have to or because they're being paid to do it, and the Gospel should be the focus, not the missionaries. Personally, I'm not keen of the idea of doing missionary work, but I am far more willing to share the Gospel with anyone I think it could help. I may not go around, passing out copies of The Book of Mormon or urging people to get baptized, but I would be much more comfortable promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Naturally, the difference is merely mental and semantic, but it makes sense to me. Sharing the Gospel sounds nice and easy and much more appealing, whereas missionary work sounds a bit too much like work.

Fun "Challenges"

The challenge of a DM is to create fun challenges for their players. Tonight, however, it turned out that several of the "challenges" I had set up for my players were easily solved, causing me to think that I should make these challenges harder. However, the players had fun "breaking" the puzzles I had put before them, and I guess that's all that really matters. I helped my friends have fun, so I'd say that tonight was a success.

At the end of the day, what's really important is that we help each other have fun, be happy, and find joy. Naturally, living the Gospel is the only way to lasting joy, but outside of the scope of the Gospel, there are countless ways to have fun and find happiness. So long as that fun and happiness don't go against the Gospel, just about any way to get it is about as good as any other. Tonight, we enjoyed the fun of easily overcoming challenges. In the future, we may have the fun of facing difficult challenges and barely overcoming them. I suppose the exact nature of the game doesn't matter, just so long as everyone has a good time. Similarly, the exact nature of a person's life doesn't matter, so long as it makes them happy and brings them joy.

Fixing Unfairness

Life is unfair. When Elder Dale G. Renlund spoke of life's "Infuriating Unfairness," he said both that "Christ will consecrate the unfairness for our gain [and] will use the unfairness for our benefit" and that we should "try to alleviate unfairness where we find it."

I wonder how this is supposed to work out. If the unfairness of life is, ultimately, supposed to work out for our benefit, why try to fix it? Is the unfairness of life a bad thing that we should try to reduce or a good thing that we should try to benefit from?

Of course, the true answer isn't as simple as saying that unfairness is good or bad. It's a mixed blessing, or a beneficial affliction. According to Elder Renlund, we should try to reduce unfairness, and so we should, and I'm sure God will still make sure that everybody benefits from the unfairness before we fix it and/or from the unfairness that persists, despite all our best efforts.

Life is unfair, and God will make sure that that, ultimately, is a good thing. But still, in the meantime, we should do what we can to make life a little less unfair.