Recently I have been thinking a lot about what it means to live well--to truly be happy in the face of adversity. In my musings, I concluded that the most important distinction concerning our personal trials is not IF we endure it, but HOW. Hard things happen to everyone, and the test of life is to choose happiness in the face of it all through the promises given to us by our Heavenly Father.
The next step on this journey is to think about why life exists that way. In other words, we ask these questions:
Why would God make a world full of heartache if he wants us to grow?
For what purpose are we learning and growing?
The answer to this question is directly related to our eventual destiny as God's children.
Each child is born of a father and mother with an innate equality of potential. Every loving parent wants their child to enjoy at least the same happiness, success, and knowledge that they do, if not more.
One of the sweetest truths we know is that we are children of a Heavenly Father who loves us. He regards us with the same paternal care as the greatest of earthly fathers would. He created a plan whereby we could enjoy small parts of his happiness in this life to be consummated in a life to come in which we taste of the same joy he has. The fulfillment of our potential as his children rests on our ability to learn to be as he is and to think with the same wisdom and love that he does.
A second grand truth of the gospel of Christ is that eternity will not be spent lazing away with a harp on a cloud. We will be learning, creating, doing, and acting for the benefit of those we love. No one is truly happy is this life sitting and doing nothing, so why would the next life be any different? This life is designed as a preparation for the rest of our existence.
So if our lives are a microcosm of what eternity will hold, what can we look forward to? What is God's existence like, which he wants us to have?
We always think of heaven as this perfect place, surrounded by perfect people, with not a scrap of sadness, pain, or a tear to be found. That may be true sometimes. But there are instances where sadness may creep in.
In a truly beautiful record of a conversation between God and Enoch, we learn a lot about what our Heavenly Father feels and how he responds to us as his children. As God watches his children disobey the things he had asked, leaving them lost and miserable, the record says,
"And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?
And Enoch said unto the Lord: How is it that thou canst weep seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?
And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations; and thy curtains are stretched out still; and yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there; and also thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever... and naught but peace, justice, and truth is the habitation of thy throne; and mercy shall go before thy face and have no end; how is it thou canst weep?
The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;
And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood;" (Moses 7:28-33).
God is our Father. He loves us. When we stray, he feels it. When we weep, he hears it, even if no one else does. When we turn away from him, he longs for us to come back. He feels it so poignantly that Enoch, a mortal man, couldn't bear it.
"And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Enoch, and told Enoch all the doings of the children of men; wherefore Enoch knew, and looked upon their wickedness, and their misery, and wept and stretched forth his arms, and his heart swelled wide as eternity; and his bowels yearned; and all eternity shook.
And as Enoch saw this, he had bitterness of soul, and wept over his brethren, and said unto the heavens: I will refuse to be comforted;" (Moses 7: 41, 44).
Enoch was unable to cope with that kind of pressure without further knowledge and development. But God was perfectly able because he had learned to find perfect happiness through is experience, so much so that he says simply:
Lift up your heart, and be glad; and look.
God did not let his happiness become tainted by circumstances or others' decisions. No, he had a perfect eternal perspective. What was he instructing Enoch to look at that made him so able to be happy despite his children hating him at times?
"And Enoch saw the day of the coming of the Son of Man, even in the flesh, and his soul rejoiced."
He looked to Christ. He looked at the eternal perspective--the larger plan.
God watches his children fail 7 billion times a day. In one way or another, we fight against him like a small child against the loving and sometimes disciplining hand of a caring parent. The only way God knew how to have the sweetest kind of joy despite the temporary sting of his children's disavowal of him was that he learned it.
That is the goal toward which we are aiming. This life is our time to begin to develop that eternal perspective, to cope with trials on a small scale, and to change the way we view the world to be more in line with the way our Heavenly Father sees it.
Life is hard sometimes, and often it is hard because of another's decisions. Yet those choices are essential for life. Some would ask why God would create a world in which those choices lead to suffering. The fact is that this mortal life is not the only place where agency is a factor. Eternal life includes the same place for agency that this life does. Learning to be happy despite circumstance now is an eternal imperative for us when circumstances turn to a much larger scale hereafter. Gaining that ability to grow, to cope, and to find sweet peace and joy despite anything that happens is an eternal principle.
A friend of mine shared with me the phrase, "I have faith in Christ, not faith in outcomes."
For us to gain a share of the eternal perspective that God employs to find his joy, we need to look to Christ, just as God instructed Enoch to do when he said, "I will refuse to be comforted," or when our hearts think there may be no way to heal what has happened and make way for joy again.
Lift up your heart, and be glad; and look.
